A Walker in the Suburbs

On Sunday, I walked to a friend’s house. This would seem unremarkable unless you knew the narrow hilly road that connects our neighborhoods. There’s no shoulder, no margin of error. The road was built long before all the development that’s clogged our county. 

Luckily, I had a secret weapon: a path through the woods that goes from my house to my friends’. It takes about 30 minutes, compared with a five-minute drive. But since I’m just back from a world where walking with purpose is far more common than it is here, I was more than willing to do it. 

While I was strolling I was thinking about how natural it seems when you’re doing it: walking not just for exercise but because you need to get from Point A to Point B.

I wish I could do more of it.

(Pedestrians in Funchal, Madeira)

Not home, not yet. A stopover in Lisbon has landed us in the same neighborhood and same hotel that we stayed in two years ago on our first big post-Covid trip. The whole world seemed lit up again when we were here in June of 2022. 

I thought the energy and bustle was springing from all that pent-up travel desire. But the energy and bustle are still here. From the moment we stepped out of the Baixa-Chiado Metro stop to  rousing street music, I felt the pulse of this city, the light and magic of it. 

We dove right in, strolling through Bairro Alto and Baixa, ogling pastry in bakery windows, finding not one but two lovely viewpoints over the city, and crowding onto the Number 28 trolley for our ride “home.”

It’s fun to explore a new destination, but there’s a special satisfaction in returning to the already-visited places, the ones we love enough to see again. 

Madeira is a mountainous island. This makes for vistas aplenty, some of them vertiginous. A walk we took the other day was along a cliff edge. 

It wasn’t right on the edge, and the path was generous, but it took most of my concentration to focus on the path ahead and not look too far out or down. The few times I did, though, I was rewarded with glimpses of blue sky, white waves and lush greenery.

Soon the trail turned inland, and we followed a steep old road down to the shore. The knees were a bit wobbly at the end, both from the height and the effort. But they made it.

The village of Câmara de Lobos is perched near one of the world’s tallest cliffs, but it’s stunning even when seen from a less-imposing viewpoint. We approached it on foot, walking across a bridge, past acres of banana trees. 

When Winston Churchill visited Madeira, he set up up his easel to capture the bustling harbor we just saw today. A hotel nearby has memorialized his visits with a sculpture of the prime minister. You can sit next to him if you like.  

But the best part of Câmara de Lobos was walking home from it, up into the hills to Levada dos Piornias, taking the high road back to Funchal. It was a balancing act, as the only path was along the edge of the levada itself. But it got us home. 

Madeira is made for walking, and we took a levada walk on our first full day on the island, joining a group of Scandinavians who gather every Saturday to stroll the paths alongside the irrigation canals (levadas) for which Madeira is known. 

The levadas were built to pipe water from one end of the island to another, but the trails that run beside them have become an attraction in and of themselves. Saturday’s hike took us to the village of Camacha, approximately 2,300 feet above sea level. Luckily, most of the altitude gain was accomplished by a swashbuckling bus driver switch-backing up a narrow highway into the hills. We only walked the last few hundred feet. 

Once on the levada trail, we pretty much had the level path to ourselves. We ambled and chatted, took a break to swig some water, then walked some more. 

We ended the hike at a Camacha watering hole that serves the local specialty, poncha, a tangy-sweet drink made of sugar-cane rum, honey, and fruit juice. The leader of our merry band suggested that we sing Swedish drinking songs before every skål! We sang many songs. It was that kind of day.