The sunny south-west: a sugar-cane mill that still makes rum, a golden beach and a museum cut into the cliff.
Sugar made Madeira rich in the fifteenth century, and Calheta is one of the few places where you can still watch it being worked. At the Engenho da Calheta the cane is crushed in spring, and the rest of the year you can see the old machinery and taste the rum and the mel de cana, the dark cane syrup that goes into the island's honey cake.
Below the mill is a rare thing on this island: a beach of golden sand, sheltered by breakwaters. Above it, on the clifftop, the MUDAS contemporary art museum is worth the climb for the building alone, dark basalt volumes that seem cut from the rock, with the ocean at the end of every corridor.
A tipCalheta is the base for the 25 Fontes walk at Rabaçal, up on the plateau above. Do the walk in the morning and come down to the beach after.
- From Funchalabout 35 minutes by car
- Mill at workroughly March to May
- Beachgolden sand, brought in
At the end of the route, in Funchal, four artists draw whatever you bring back from the island: a place, a flower, a word, a set of coordinates.
The outline of the island
Madeira in a single line.