Tag: Madeira

Digital · Photography

Fortress of São João Baptista do Pico

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A few days into the Madeira trip, I took a walk from the hotel to an old fortress that I’d seen featured in an online tour guide. While only half a mile or so from the hotel “as the crow flies”, it was a somewhat more meandering hike “as the human walks” – and not just side to side, but also up and down as the fort was on the other side of a ridge from where we were staying. The final leg of the walk was particularly steep, proper thigh-master stuff.

Fortified
Out

Once at the fortress the views across Funchal and out south across the Atlantic were very nice. The fortress had scope for a bunch of pictures and I shot several on both film and digital (I’ll share the film pictures on a later date). In terms of other things to do, there wasn’t a great deal. There was a single open room containing paintings of the fort from various times in its history, plus a couple of small empty turret areas, but the rest of the structure was out of bounds. At first I thought I must’ve missed something but, upon asking an attendant, I was informed that more of the structure was planned to be opened at some future date. Perhaps I’ll get to revisit it one day and see the rest.

Stormlight
Prisoner's view

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 26 June 2026

Digital · Photography

Hotel overlook

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No, not the one from The Shining!

This is a view overlooking the lawn area beside one of our hotel’s swimming pools (there were three – one indoor, and another outdoor pool on the same level from which I took this picture). The hotel was quite maze-like and it took almost until the end of our holiday to get a decent feel for how the different areas and levels all interconnected.

The white building in the picture is also part of the complex and housed one of the hotel’s a la carte restaurants on its ground floor (which is a floor below what you can see here!). The hotel reception is below the swimming pool.

This was shot on our first day at the hotel. We had a couple of days where it became quite overcast in the afternoon, although even on otherwise sunny days, the mountain tops would usually be lost to cloud come mid-afternoon.

Below a heavy sky

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 22 June 2026

Digital · Photography

Back in the UK

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I’m home again after 11 days on the beautiful island of Madeira. I have loads of pictures to come from the trip (five rolls of film to get developed), plus a bunch of digital shots as well.

I’ll probably not get around to posting the film shots for a while as I still have a backlog of other stuff to post, but I’ll be dropping some of the digital pictures in over the coming week or so. As usual, it will be a mix of whatever caught my eye, such as this staircase in our hotel.

Going down

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 22 June 2026