Let me start with a question. What immediately springs to mind when you hear the name “Madeira”? Not the cake, I should clarify (it’s not actually from Madeira) and not the fortified wine either (which is). I mean the little sub-tropical island in the Atlantic ocean.
I did a straw poll on this, by the way, asking everyone I came across. And the response, and this was true pretty much across the over-50s board, was an unironic “isn’t that the place old people like to go to?” (Most young people I spoke to had never even heard of it.)
Which was exactly what I’d thought as well. Which (laugh if you will – Pete and I are in our sixties) made it entirely unsuitable mini-break material.
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Yes, I know, I should probably clarify. Each to their own and all that, but I’ve always been slightly averse to the kind of marketing that makes clear a definite bias towards us oldies. Which is a pretty logical position to take when in your twenties, what with the chill winds of disapproval you expect to be blowing like hurricanes and the whiff of camphor (and bath salts, and lavender-scented drawer liners) you, rightly or wrongly, expect them to carry.
But then I got into my thirties, and forties, and beyond, and the bias, for it is one, persisted. If there was so much of spicule of unashamed oldster appeal – “it’s lovely and peaceful”, “no noise after 10pm”, or the in-your-face “absolutely perfect for ‘seniors’”, I would, and will, run for the hills. And that’s hills, as in actual, not virtual. And I grew similarly averse, cutting our options down further, to anywhere that boasted “no children”. After all, for the most part, if you advertise “no children” you are effectively also saying “Sayonara, matey” to anyone who currently HAS children. Which, by default, has pretty much the same effect.
And it’s not, this, a bias against actual oldies. I am one. I buy The Oldie.
I embrace my greys and my wrinkles. I just feel weird – that’s definitely the word that best fits here – holidaying anywhere half the population aren’t present. Which probably makes me a kind of vampire, I know, feeding off youth, noise and devil-may-care revelry. But it is what it is. And I doubt I’m going to change now. If I’m lucky enough to make seriously aged bones, just park me slap-bang in the middle of a party.
So was Madeira for us? Definitely not. But, you know, needs must and all that. We were after a few days of half-term sunshine along with teacher daughter Georgie and, as we all know, if you teach you have that wondrous employment perk of paying shedloads of cash to board over-stuffed transport to pay shedloads more cash at mega-price-hiked hotels, while people who know nothing about the pressures of teaching blather on about that “whole 12 weeks off”.
But, hurrah. We then came upon reasonably priced flights, to a place not too distant that was likely to be sunny. Which was, of course, the island of Madeira. And, better still, once we started searching for accommodation in earnest, the plethora of reviews we found immediately suggested that young people, lots of them, seemed to like Madeira too. Were in fact going to Madeira in their droves.
So we went to Madeira.
And, goodness me, what a glorious turn-up. Off the bat, of course, we could definitely see what the appeal was for the older traveller. (Well, once they’re recovered from landing on what’s generally known to be one of the world’s most challenging runaways.) It’s beautiful, it’s safe, it’s genteel and elegant. It welcomes cruise-lovers in their absolute hordes. And with the banana plantations that are absolutely everywhere, it has a strong (if inaccurate – it’s been part of Portugal for centuries) sense of “Olde English Colonial”.
But that’s kind of where the “gentle” vibe ends. Madeira is fierce. Yes, there are flat bits you can stroll around, but this is a volcanic archipelago, and has the steepest, most tortuous road network I think I have ever experienced, and I say this having spent a lot of time driving in the Alps. So, though stunningly beautiful, Madeira has roads that sometimes – no often, no, almost always – are literally like that bit on a rollercoaster when you first go careering wildly over the top and can see nothing but sky where you’re headed. Add in the hairpins, the sheer drops, the twisty dark tunnels … and that’s just the A roads. And the other thing to note about driving in Madeira is that Madeirans, in my short experience, drive like lunatics. And this isn’t just anecdotal evidence. Quite apart from all the inexplicably complicated junctions, safe to say that I’m glad I didn’t google “road safety on Madeira” before hiring a car there.
It also lacks safe, sandy, Mediterranean-style beaches. And those few that they do have are mostly located at the bottom of “roads” which snake down precipitously steep hills – so, see above. And the sea doesn’t lap here, not in February, it thrashes – mostly up against skin-lacerating volcanic rocks.
And as for walking, some of the many Levada hiking trails advertised are so perilous you have to register with the island’s tourist website even before setting out, which system can’t help but have a worrying Scott of the Antarctic kind of feel to it. And, yes, having seen them, I think it’s fair to say that you may well be gone for some time.
Which, all in all, made me wonder this about Madeira. Had this vibrant and buzzy island been the subject of the biggest case of inadvertent mis-selling of the previous century? Or, as I was increasingly coming to think, is our notion of what the “old” are all wrong?
It’s been said to me, more than once, that “my grandfather loved it” or “my gran used to go every year”. This by people of my age, and sometimes a little older, whose grandparents, obviously, lived through the horrors of the Second World War. Drove tanks. Cleared bomb debris. Patched the grievously wounded. Lived life, for those years, at a pitch unknown by most of us still alive today. Was that it? Were they just made of very stern stuff? And have ever since connived to keep its USP going, the better to keep the masses away?
It actually turns out that this island’s specific reputation goes back much further. As part of a major trade route, and with almost year-round sunshine, in the 1800s it became the go-to for the families of merchants, and, crucially, was soon also spotted by canny entrepreneurs as the perfect location for the wealthy but ill to recover from their various malaises. I kid you not. These were grim times in damp, draughty Britian. Madeira was all about convalescence tourism.
Which, via a century or so of what seems to me to have mostly been a case of word-based misunderstanding, brought us where we are now – to “wellness tourism”. Which is, of course, as youthful a concept and as modern as you can get.
Which is why I’m reticent about recommending it, as it’s only going to get busier. But I can’t not. If you’ve a mind to do a mini-break and you’re aged between one and one hundred, you should definitely go visit Madeira.
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