We were looking for somewhere new to travel for a spring break that was not too far, or too hot and with summits I had chased. Madeira was chosen as neither of us had been there before with hopefully good weather, not too hot, some good walking in prospect and 4 summits I had chased.
We set off very early Friday morning (9th May 2025) for our nearest airport, Birmingham. We allowed plenty of time to park and drop our baggage expecting the inevitable delay at the security check. As expected, I was pulled over (by the AI on the scanning) for a separate inspection. You no longer need to separate items from your carry-on bag at Birmingham for the screening but it thought I had something suspicious. I was asked if they could open the bag and I offered the information that I had two Li-Fe batteries. He removed them from the bag, their box and their safety bags to give them a swab and was then happy to let me continue.
The items in question
The rest of the flight out was uneventful and ran to time. After collecting a hire car from the airport, finding our way to the hotel on unfamiliar roads and then checking in we had an afternoon siesta. We were staying on the south coast at Porta da Oliveira between the airport and the capital, Funchal. Our room had a view over the sea towards the Desertas Islands. The resort was in easy reach of the summits that are accessed from the south and the northeast of the island.
Sunrise from our balcony later in the week after the thunderstorms had moved on with a view of the three Desertas Islands
While the UK was basking in glorious sunshine, Madeira was suffering from thunderstorms, strong winds, incessant rain and cloud, especially on all the high ground. The weather was the wrong way round to what was usually expected. We realised over time that the hills were usually clear in the morning but by noon (local time, which is the same as the UK even though it is 16 degrees west), the clouds would gather making it likely to get very wet.
Wanting to get on with activating, we decided to try Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006) on the Saturday (10th May 2025) even though rain was possible, this looked to be the easiest summit to walk with the least accent and distance. Indeed it did drizzle on the walk up, and we nearly went back to the car but we persevered and were rewarded with a mostly dry activation. We parked to the southeast of the summit in a rather potholed gravel carpark (fortunately the hire car, a Citroen C4, had plenty of ground clearance) at the Estanquinhos picnic area. We set off with 100 m of assent and 1 km of walking following the signposts up the hillside between the gorse with the views behind to a windfarm and in front down the deep valley opening up before us at the various viewpoints. Apart from the height, much of the area reminded us of home. We saw no-one and set up right by the trig point and the sign proudly displaying the elevation of 1639 metres; we were higher than anywhere in the British Isles from when we left the car.
Our route up and down Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006)
The view of the top of Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006) half way up the walk
The view back to the carpark and windfarm half way up Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006)
Helen walking up Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006) with the clouds clearing to give a view of the valley to Sao Vicente and the ridge up to the summit of Queimadas (CT3/MI-007) as the backdrop
The elevation sign on the summit of Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006)
The view down the valley to Sao Vicente and the northern coast from the viewpoint on the top of Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006)
I started on 20 metres making six quick contacts to Ireland, the UK and Spain (qualifying the summit and giving me another complete). Helen then took over on the same band to activate the summit including summit-to-summit for both of us to Martin (M1MAJ/P) and Caroline (M3ZCB/P) on Detling Hill (G/SE-013). I then moved to 17 metres with my first contact to Ralph (VE3LOE) and 15 further contacts around Europe including summit-to-summit with Stephan (HB9EAJ/P) on Schinberg (HB/AG-007).
CT9/G6WRW/P activates Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006) with the trigpoint and elevation sign
CT9/G6WRW/P activates Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006) looking back at the summit furniture
For both bands there was a high noise floor with lots of static crashes from nearby storms but this did not detract from our first activation on the island. Unfortunately the radio conditions were not going to be great for the 10 days we had available, although the thunderstorms did move on.
We followed a different route down via the camping ground to get a geocache and then found a nearby restaurant in the mountains on our way back to grab a nice post activation dinner in an unusual place called Jungle Rain with animatronics animals in trees and a robot waitress. This did indeed turn out to be the easiest, proper hill on our trip (except for CT3/MI-006 but that was a drive on which was too busy to be enjoyed) and a good 6 points in the bag.
The cloud closes in as we walk down Pico Ruivo do Paul (CT3/MI-006)
As always the well-travelled and trusty Yaesu FT-817 and HF packer amplifier was used. The antenna was a ground-mounted 20/17m linked ÂĽ wave vertical supported by a fiberglass pole.
Carolyn
Part 2 is here: SOTA in Madeira Part 2 (11th May 2025) - Activation Reports - SOTA Reflector
Part 3 is here: SOTA in Madeira Part 3, GOAT day for Helen (13th May 2025) - Activation Reports - SOTA Reflector
Part 4 is here: SOTA in Madeira Part 4 and my 2k point activation (15th & 18th May 2025) - Activation Reports - SOTA Reflector
