Maybe I'm at some sort of awkward age, but lately I always seem to be either too old or too young for my travels. There's been a gap-year-friendly bus tour of Australia on which I felt like a pensioner, a weekend in the less ravey parts of Dorset on which I acted like one, and now a trip to Madeira, an island famed as a cosy destination for well-heeled retirees.
So it was with some satisfaction that, on the second night of our stay (a Tuesday), my companion and I found ourselves ringing an innocuous-looking doorbell in Funchal, the island's capital, and being admitted to a cavernous nightclub which we subsequently left at 4.30am, just as things seemed to be getting going. Not a heedless surrender to savage lusts, I know, but a comforting suggestion that this Madeira thing might not be too geriatric after all.
Madeira is, it's true, a place for travellers who don't like too much rough with their smooth; the island is largely crime-free and reasonably prosperous, budget accommodation is in quite short supply, and even the climate is careful to avoid any extremes. Though it seems to differ wildly from one valley to the next, the temperature rarely strays above 25C or below 17C. The overall impression in mid-March is of a slightly unreliable English May, an impression heightened by the lush green countryside and persistent threat of rain, sometimes realised.
But, emboldened by our bacchanalian escapades, we attempted to maintain the trend for youthful vigour with a doughty walking expedition. Madeira has an extensive network of irrigation channels, known as levadas, built to carry water from the backs of the valleys to fields further along, and stretching for many miles along the upper parts of the slopes without generally rising or falling very far. This makes them a series of very pleasant walking routes, leading deep into secluded valleys while often maintaining a view of the sea. So we strapped on stout boots and headed for the nearest one, the levada do norte.
After a steep climb out of town for about 10 minutes, we congratulated ourselves on the vim we were displaying, but on reaching the levada quickly realised that the steady altitude levels made the walking delightfully easy, indeed bordering on the downright lazy. If our boots now seemed a slight embarrassment, we tried not to smirk too obviously at some fellow-ramblers armed with walking poles.
Though the gradient is nonexistent, the scenery is spectacular, with steeply terraced farmland below, and rushing waterfalls frequently crossing the path, the scent of pine strong on the air and hawks wheeling overhead. We had not gone very far when we spotted what I proclaimed to be an orchid growing wild by the side of the path, an occurrence I thought so unusual it warranted a photograph. Rounding the next corner we found an entire hillside carpeted with the delicate white flowers, interrupted only occasionally by the weird red crests of bird of paradise flowers.
It was only back in Blighty that a better informed naturalist pointed out that my orchid was in fact a lily. There are, it seems, orchids on Madeira, indeed an entire garden of them in Funchal, but they don't carpet the hillsides in quite the way I thought. Ever magnaminous, I refuse to feel shortchanged that my view was filled to the horizons with these upstart "lilies", and continue to remember the vista fondly, orchids or no. One day, I'll even strike up the courage to confess my ignorance to my travelling companion.
All this naturalism could give a fellow a hunger, so we followed up a friendly recommendation to dine at As Vides in Estreito de Camara de Lobos, a restaurant specialising in espetada - succulent chunks of beef steak marinated and cooked on a spit over a wood fire. What sets this apart from any other skewered meat you've ever eaten is partly the meat itself; almost liquid slices of the most tender beef, still brightly pink and bloody inside. Also entertaining are the hat-stand like table decorations on which the spits are hung for you to slide the beef off and onto your plate - the ironwork is fashioned into the inappropriately smiling face of a very happy cow.
Other Maderian specialities include black swordfish cooked with banana, bolo de caco (a flat bread), milho frito (fried cubes of mashed corn meal), and bolo de mel, or honey cake, which is what might happen if someone tried to make Christmas pudding using a recipe for brownies. I can heartily recommend them all, with the possible exception of the milho frito, which is about as exciting as it sounds.
The island's most famous comestible, of course, is its sweet wine, so the next day we took a bus into the capital to visit Blandy's Wine Lodge for some tasting. The building and its ample stores of stencil-marked vintage bottles are impressive, and the tasting is admirably laid back; our hosts seemed happy to let us taste as many of their fine wines as we expressed an interest in, but not to persuade us of their merits, and several slightly harassed German coach parties came and went while we sipped ruminatively.
The wine trade was, and is, a major source of Madeira's prosperity, and it attracted British wine merchants keen to supply markets in Britain and America. Hence the names of some of the most famous Madeiras - Blandy's, Malmsey, Cossart & Gordon. The British left another mark on the island, and a most peculiar one. After they set up their residences in the hillside town of Monte, just above the capital, some of them desired a quick way to get to town, and - obviously - persuaded the islanders to push them down the hill in great wicker toboggans, a service which is still available today.
Hemingway apparently described the experience as one of the most exhilarating of his life, and while that is a touch excessive (especially coming from old Ernie), it's certainly one of the most surreal. The toboggans slide at what seems like breakneck speed down steep roads, and rarely seem firmly in the control of their straw-hatted pilots as they veer insistently and perilously off toward the gutter. A surprisingly long while later I find myself deposited half-way down the hill to Funchal with tears of laughter streaming down my face and deep indentations in my hands from the nails of an over-anxious tobogganing companion. It was only at this point that I stopped to wonder whether it might have been worth looking around Monte (the answer is yes, by all accounts) before allowing enthusiasm to throw me into the Basket Ride of Death, but it was too late by then and we dropped back into the town with the help of a passing taxi.
Funchal itself is a dainty little town with refreshingly few pretensions; there's a pleasant cathedral, with a wooden ceiling of fine Moorish work, which engaged us for five minutes or more, a perhaps surprisingly extensive collection of Flemish artwork to which we devoted another hour, and a general preponderance of greenery, with many of the trees carrying explanatory labels - testament to the wide variety of species that thrive on the island.
If that doesn't seem like much to recommend the town, there is more - three castles, an orchid garden and a charming tiled courtyard in the town hall, without being exhaustive - but we agreed that part of the town's appeal was the feeling that there was no pressure to see everything, or hurry to move on to the next stop on the tourist map. The terrible feeling in the pit of the stomach that you might feel in Paris or Rome that you're about to leave and you haven't seen every single reredos, altarpiece and retable is not one which will afflict you in Funchal, and correspondingly it's a lot easier, and less guilt-inducing, to stop and attain fulfilment by other means. Such as beer.
But then maybe that's my awkward age coming through again. You might think I'm prematurely old for enjoying the relaxed pace of life on Madeira, but you're wrong. I only like it because it allows me to drink beer all afternoon in peace.
· Sean Clarke is 27. For now.
· British Airways and TAP Air Portugal offer direct flights from London to Funchal.
· For further information: Madeira Tourism Board, 00 351 291 211900.
