In the night someone swapped our legs for planks of wood! Luckily they were fine by morning and there were no ill effects bar achy knees which soon eased. Today we wanted to explore the west side of the island and retraced our route to São Vincente. We stopped at the caves for a very touristy presentation of the volcano tubes with a film of the birth of Madeira and simulated lift to the centre of the earth! It was then a drive along the coast stopping for lunch near Seixal before heading inland briefly from the old coast road through a near vertical tunnel road at Ribeira Funda. It was obviously recently finished and the map had only a track marked heading straight into the mountains. Sure enough, after some distance the very steep road just stopped at half a dozen houses. Surely all that expensive tunnelling wasn’t just to make life easier for a handful of people? There was certainly no sign of future development and what a difficult location to build on anyway……Who knows?

    We turned back and continued on very windy and steep mountain roads down the west coast. Poor Simon had to concentrate on the road while I took in all the fabulous views. It was a long drive for him with just a quick coffee stop not far from where the new road system commenced. Our journey from then on progressed quickly. Si couldn’t resist a stop off at Mondelo on the way back and although we had shopped a couple of days ago we ended up with a large basket of bargains. Back on Brindabella bags were dumped and I nursed a headache while Si helped Phil with a computer problem.

   Fully provisioned we ate well tonight starting with mushrooms cooked with Madeira wine and cream with crusty bread to mop up the sauce. We then had steak and mustard mash with steamed vegetables followed by me falling into bed and Simon doing the dishes… Result!