Stunning. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Breath taking. Just a few of the words I have used time and time again to describe Madeira. I feel like a walking cliché whenever I use them but it’s just so hard not to fall in love with an Island that offers so much beauty with every step you take. It’s a diverse island, from the Sunny & golden Beached South West to the Luscious, green East side there is always something or somewhere to go not too far away. Half way through our trip to Madeira we took a half day trip to Nuns Valley – one of the highest points on the island with fear inducing drops…
We took the trip from our hotel and we steadily climbed up the mountainous hills, passing through the town where Christiano Ronaldo was born and then way up in to the vast, forested hills. Our first stop was from a viewing point to look down on the village of Nun’s Valley, real name “Curral das Freiras.” When I say you are high up, you really are in the clouds. The village itself looked like a little miniature town from where we were, so spectacular that it almost didn’t look real.
We spent about half an hour up at the highest point, taking in the views and of course getting many panoramic shots just to take in the vast space. It is described almost like a witches cauldron because of the high rise mountains, surrounding this small village in the centre of the island. I can definitely see where it gets it from.
We eventually made our decline down to the village to drink local poncha, which is a pretty potent spirit, it’s made with honey, sugar, lemon and different fruit juices. We came away with a bottle of blackberry poncha which was a little easier on the palette! I obviously treated myself to some home made chestnut cake and it was deeeeelicious. The town is famous for it’s chestnuts and they cook them with everything. Part of their staple diet.
It was so crazy that within a matter of minutes we were up in the clouds and then down low on the ground looking back up. It’s a pretty unique little spot on the island and would highly recommend making this one of your trips out. It was only half a day which meant I got the chance to soak up some rays by the pool too!
Would you go on a trip like this? Or are you afraid of heights? I’d love to know some of the places you have been with amazing views like this.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
You can adjust all of your cookie settings by navigating the tabs on the left hand side.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.