Madeira levadas: which walks are easy and which are mountain routes

Levadas are irrigation channels, not footpaths — walking beside them is a by-product. The island holds over 2,170 kilometres of them, with tens of kilometres of tunnels, and that is why Madeira gets covered on foot even by people who do not hike. The trouble is that one word covers both a flat stroll by the water and a traverse along an unfenced ledge, and the name of the trail does not tell you which.

What a levada is and why it exists at all

The north-west of the island is wet, the south-east dry, and sugar cane needed water where there was none. The channels were built from the sixteenth century into the 1940s, with Genoese money, slave labour and the labour of convicts, cut into cliffs in places that would not be easy with machines today. The water still runs and the system is still in use — part irrigation, part hydroelectric. Alongside each channel runs a maintenance path about as wide as the channel itself, and that is what you walk on: which is why levadas are mostly level, following the contour, and why they look easier than some of them are.

What counts as easy, and what does not

Easy is flat, wide and tunnel-free — like the Levada do Caniçal, about eleven and a half kilometres through acacia woods, where the only risk is rain. Moderate is anything entering tunnels: the Levada do Caldeirão Verde runs through them and calls for a torch and a helmet, and the whole Caldeirão Verde and Inferno network measures around thirty-seven kilometres. Hard is what stops being a levada and becomes a mountain route: PR1 from the Pico do Arieiro viewpoint at 1,818 metres to Pico Ruivo at 1,861 metres is seven kilometres and about three and a half hours, with volcanic tunnels, steep stairways and exposed slopes. Pico Ruivo is the island's highest point and there is no way up it other than walking.

The fee, and the status of the trail

Since 2026 the officially classified trails are booked and paid for in advance through the regional SIMplifica portal, in half-hour slots between sunrise and sunset. Independent walkers pay €4.50 per person per trail, those with an accredited operator €3, and PR1 from Arieiro carries its own, higher fee of €10.50. So no trail requires a guide — a guide only makes the entry cheaper. More important than the fee is something else: the forestry and nature institute publishes the status of every trail and closes them regularly after rain and landslides. A closed trail is a prohibition rather than advice, and a forecast from three days ago is worth nothing — check the status the same morning, before setting off, because trails open and shut within the same week.

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Kit and weather

Shoes with a sole that grips wet rock are the one genuinely necessary item; the rest can be improvised. With them goes a rain jacket regardless of the forecast, because the weather in the north and the weather in Funchal are not the same thing, and fifteen hundred metres of altitude carries ten degrees with it. Tunnels need a head torch — a phone will not do the job, because your hands are for balance. Start early: by midday the cloud climbs the ridge and a viewpoint at 1,818 metres becomes a white curtain, which happens on Arieiro more often than people would like.

Funchal as the base

About 250,000 people live on the island and roughly half of them in Funchal, so choosing a base is really choosing between the town and the quiet. Funchal averages 20 °C over the year, has the cable car to Monte and most of the accommodation, and the airport is thirteen kilometres to the north-east. That airport is its own story: the runway is 2,781 metres long and partly stands on a platform over the ocean on 180 columns, while the hills rule out a standard instrument approach, so landings are visual with a turn of nearly 180 degrees. Crews train for it specially and fly to special wind limits — cancellations and diversions are not rare, and are worth building into the plan. Funchal is also a cruise port, so days with two ships in dock change the crowds in the old town and the prices along the seafront. The other base that makes sense is the north-west, around Porto Moniz and its natural lava pools — further from the airport, but closer to the wet trails and the laurel forest.

When to come: effectively any month. Funchal stays mild in winter, so there is no month you cannot walk in; the difference is rain, and the fact that the north is nearly always wetter. The laurel forest most of the trails run through is on the UNESCO list and is at least 1.8 million years old — and it is the one part of Madeira you cannot see from any viewpoint, only from inside, on the path.