It’s been 20 fabulous months, but now my travelling time is over. I’m back in Chambéry, trying to get my own game projects going, working from home. It can’t be without some smaller trips though and so Christian and I decided to do a mountain biking trip in November. Since the weather is not that stable in central Europe at this time of the year, we started searching elsewhere. Corsica, Mallorca, the Canaries? Could we do a trip across a whole island or even around it? In the end we discovered and settled on Madeira. We’ve had an adventurous and spectacular week and I hope that this article can bring that across.
300km off the African coast and 600km off the Portuguese coast, this archipelago has an all year long mild climate, perfect for cycling and hiking. The main island is marked by its steep coastline and high peaks of up to 1862m, so we expected a lot of up and down. Our idea was to cover the whole island, but not miss out on the good parts in the central mountains. We would take only a small backpack with us and stay at a different place every night. Every evening we would plan the next day ahead. Here’s a photo overview of all the 6 days of mountain biking fun:
Useful links:
- Downhill trails on Madeira: Trailforks (very detailed, mostly up to date)
- Mountainbike trails with gpx files: Wikiloc, Everytrail, Redbike, MTB Magazin (beware that tracks might be out of date)
- An online map to visualise multiple GPX files per drag&drop: MyGPSfiles
- Plan your trip with distance and elevation profile: Graphhopper
- Offline Android Outdoor Maps: Oruxmaps + OpenandroMaps, my blog article about it
- Very helpful MTB trip operators on Madeira: Bikulture, Bikebus
- Bus companies: Rodeste (western part), SAM (eastern part), Horarios (Funchal / eastern part)
- Super helpful + friendly + cheap + bike friendly EcoDesign Guesthouse near the airport that even offers airport transfer