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| The caminho real near Boaventura climbs up and crosses the cliff face to the left |
Before
motor vehicles came to Madeira, the main routes for people and goods
were the so-called ‘caminho real’ (royal road) paths that
virtually circumnavigated the island and connected coast with coast,
harbour with cliff-top village. I can’t find much to explain what
makes them ‘royal’, but they may have been built on the command
of the Portuguese monarch in earlier eras – they were certainly
regarded as municipal thoroughfares.
The
arrival of the internal combustion engine made many stretches
obsolete, as goods moved from mule to truck and new roads were built
up and down the valleys to accommodate this newer but less nimble
mode of transport. Yet plenty of stretches of the old caminhos still
survive, recognisable by the typically Portuguese fetish for
labour-intensive, mosaic-like paving. For, just as the footways of
Lisbon and Funchal are paved with elaborate stone patterns, so these
Madeiran paths have been painstakingly surfaced with thousands of
flakes of volcanic stone. Moreover, when any kind of slope presents
itself (hardly uncommon in this landscape), the gradients have been
gently eased with beautiful curved-edged steps – hence their
unsuitability for cars and lorries.
It can be
quite sobering to see how the precipitous coastal terrain has been
tamed by these paths, as they hug cut-out ledges along the cliff
side, or zig-zag up from sea level across the cliff face itself. They
are at their most dramatic on the north coast – itself the most
spectacular part of the island – where sections can still be
walked, though they survive in varying degrees of decrepitude. The
easiest stretch to access is found at the half-forgotten hamlet of
Calhau, down at the foot of a deep valley between São Jorge and
Santana. Here, a modern restaurant and bathing complex mask the
ancient set of the landscape as one passes the basalt cliffs at the
river’s mouth. Ruins of old mill buildings shelter the remaining
houses from the worst the sea can throw at them and between them a briefly
driveable half-kilometre stretch of paved caminho leads up towards
the cliff. Rounding the corner, we find the sea has already consumed
half the original width of the path, but it’s still more than wide
enough to be safe and there’s enough of the stonework left to
admire the construction, complete with water channel at the edge.
A wooden
bridge replaces the remnants of an old stone bridge that fell away
only half a dozen years ago and the path rises to hug a natural ledge
between two different strata of volcanic rock. The sea rages safely
below and meanwhile the cliff walls offer a perch for an array of
colourful plants, which seem to be at their floriferous peak in May
and June. Most fascinating are the frankly tumescent house leeks,
bulging out from their vertical fastness before flowering with a rather
disappointing yellow spray:
This
particular caminho links the bases of three zig-zag trails up from
near sea level to the villages on the top, but it must also have been
built to provide access to the ‘cais antigo’ (old quay) at the
end of the knife-edge peninsular that provides the visual end of this
particular walk. There’s now a permanent-looking ‘no pedestrians’
sign barring access to this last stretch, but it still looks
technically walkable – down a steep flight of rough steps and
across a wooden bridge attached to the cliff-side – and I’m sure
it’s still used by local fishermen. In days gone by, goods would
have been winched up from boats below – indeed, there’s still a
working crane for launching the boats themselves.
Backtracking
from the no entry sign one can either simply return the same way
(it’s barely 20 minutes back to the car park), or more
enterprisingly and energetically climb one of the zig-zag paths –
unmissable with its curved steps to the right of the main path –
which eventually meets a road. Follow this to the left and a cafe is
reached in ten minutes, from where another zig-zag path leads back
down to Calhau again.
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| Calhau, with one of the zig-zag paths heading up the slope behind, and another descending from the right |
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