Madeira · northeast coast

Hiking near Santana

Every marked trail near Santana

Distances, difficulty and climb come from the trail catalog. Difficulty is the official grade where a panel gives one, otherwise an honest estimate from distance, ascent and exposure.

The range, shortest to longest

Distances near Santana are what you actually cover: where a trail is an out and back, the round trip is counted, because you walk the same path twice. The climb figure is ours, read off the elevation profile, because no official ascent number is published for any Madeira trail.

• Shortest walk: 1.1 km, Caminho Real nº23 Achada do Gramacho
• Longest walk: 17.4 km, Levada do Caldeirão Verde
• Least climbing: +75 m, Caminho Real nº23 Achada do Gramacho
• Most climbing: +1,291 m, Levada do Caldeirão Verde
• Every trail on this list added up: 118.2 km

What the walking is like

Counted trail by trail near Santana, from the catalog's own tags. A levada follows a working water channel and stays close to level; a summit route climbs and is open to whatever the ridge is doing. One trail can carry several tags, so these figures add up to more than 16.

• Forest: 15 of 16
• Viewpoint: 12 of 16
• Endemic flora: 9 of 16
• Levada: 8 of 16
• Summit: 7 of 16
• Waterfall: 7 of 16
• Coastal: 2 of 16
• Historic: 2 of 16
• Family friendly: 1 of 16
• Exposed: 1 of 16

Named places these trails pass

Every name below belongs to a mapped object sitting on one of these trail lines: summits, viewpoints and waterfalls, plus chapels and other heritage. Each name links to a trail that passes it. A point with no name on the map is not listed, so read this as what has been named, never as everything worth stopping for.

• Summit: Ruivo, Achada do Teixeira, Alto, Arieiro, Cabeço da Vigia, Casado, Coelho, Eirinhas, Encumeada Baixa, Ferreiro, Jorge, Lage
• Viewpoint: Portela, Astronomia, Balcões, Birdwatching, Cabeço do Resto, Chão do Cedro Gordo, Encumeada, Pico do Arieiro, Posto Florestal Cascalho, Rocha do Navio
• Waterfall: Caldeirão do Inferno

When the summits are shut in

The highest ground on a marked trail around Santana is 1862 m, on Vereda do Pico Ruivo. The lowest ceiling is 214 m, on Caminho Real nº23 Achada do Gramacho. That gap is the choice you have on a morning when cloud sits on the ridge: how Madeira's microclimates work explains why the two can be different weather on the same day.

Sun and shade

Each trail carries one shade class, derived from which way its slope faces and how steep that slope is. A north-facing hillside stands in its own shadow for much of the day and a south-facing one does not, which is the difference between an August walk that is bearable at two in the afternoon and one that is not. It reads the shape of the ground and nothing else: it does not know about tree cover, so a levada under laurel canopy can come out as full sun, and it is a derived estimate rather than anything surveyed.

• Full sun: 4 of 16
• Sun & shade: 4 of 16
• Mostly shaded: 8 of 16

What these trails ask of you

• Need a paid Simplifica booking: 8 of 16
• Officially classified IFCN routes: 9 of 16
• Pass through tunnels, where a torch is not optional: 5 of 16

Booking and payment happen on the government portal, not here. For the flow, the timing and what a slot costs, see what SIMplifica costs and how to book.

Who manages these, and why they are not on the portal

IFCN lists Câmara Municipal do Funchal as the managing entity for Vereda do Burro, rather than IFCN itself. IFCN sells reservations only for the routes it manages, which is the reason these are official classified routes with no slot on the SIMplifica portal and no reservation fee. It cuts the other way too: a restriction decided by Câmara Municipal do Funchal may never reach IFCN's status table at all.

Where these walks start and finish

7 of the 16 walks near Santana finish somewhere other than where they start, which is the most expensive fact to find out late: you park, you walk, and the car is at the far end. The place names are the catalog's own, each linked to a walk that begins or ends there.

• Start points: Achada do Gramacho, Queimadas, Ribeiro Frio, Santana cliff top, Estrada da Achada do Panasco, Ribeira Funda, Centro de São Roque do Faial, junto à Residencial San Roque, Quebradas, E.R. 218 - Estrada do Pico das Pedras (Santana), Achada do Teixeira, Pico do Areeiro, Levada do Pico Ruivo, Casa de Abrigo do Pico Ruivo, Pico Ruivo
• Finish points that are not also a start: Calhau de São Jorge, Pico das Pedras, Balcões, Poço do Bezerro, Fajã da Rocha do Navio, Miradouro da Boca das Voltas, Lombo Grande (turnaround), Ribeiro Bonito, Portela, Madre da levada (Ribeira dos Arcos stream junction), Ribeira das Cales, Fajã da Nogueira, Ilha, Encumeada, Caldeirão do Inferno

Where you leave the car

Counted from the car parks mapped beside these trailheads. Where the only mapped point sits on the trailhead itself, it is not counted as a car park, because that is the start of the walk rather than somewhere to leave the car. Distances are straight lines from the start.

• Trailheads with a car park mapped: 14 of 16
• Of those, with a recorded number of spaces: 7 of 14
• Spaces recorded across them: 231
• Largest single car park: 168
• Car park more than 250 m from the start: 5 of 14

A mapped car park is not a promise that a space is free when you arrive, and a trailhead with none listed is one nobody has mapped rather than one with nowhere to stop.

Which of these you can reach by bus

These trailheads around Santana are close to a stop on the Funchal bus network. The distance is a straight line from the trailhead.

• Vereda do Burro: 39 m from Pico Areeiro (PA11), lines PA
• Levada do Poço do Bezerro: 1.8 km from Poiso (69002), lines PA

Only the Funchal operator publishes a machine-readable timetable, so a trail missing from this list is one we hold no bus data for, not one no bus reaches.

Common questions about hiking near Santana

Other areas: Calheta · Porto Moniz · Machico · Câmara de Lobos · Porto Santo · Ribeira Brava · Ponta do Sol · Funchal · São Vicente · Santa Cruz
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