Levada dos Piornais

A levada is an irrigation channel with a maintenance path running beside it. This one begins among the streets of São Martinho, in Funchal, and walks out of the city rather than into the mountains. The houses thin out and the route enters banana terraces stacked on the slope, with the sea open below and mountains ahead. Sea views hold for most of the way. The full line runs about 8 km in one direction, with water moving beside you the whole time. Where the levada crosses a road above Forum Madeira there is a cafe by the path, good for coffee and cake. Go east instead and the walk comes out by the football stadium. This is a working landscape of cultivated plots and animals, not a nature reserve.

• Length: about 8 km one way. Turn back early and it becomes an easy 1–2 hour stroll.
• No facilities on the path: the nearest public toilets and drinking water are about 550 m from the access point, both free.
• Getting back: the eastern end comes out by the football stadium, where you can catch a bus instead of retracing the whole route.
• Coffee stop: a cafe sits beside the levada where it crosses a road west of Forum Madeira.
• Urban start: the first stretch runs between houses and roads, not through forest.

Two asphalt car parks sit within about 60 m of the access point in São Martinho, so you can drive almost to the water. Buses stop at Hotel Panorâmico, roughly 100 m from the channel. The levada crosses several roads along its length, so you can join it or leave it at more than one point rather than starting from one fixed trailhead.