Where to swim on an island with almost no sand: imported beaches, black pebbles, lava pools and municipal lidos.
Madeira is a volcanic island, so the coast is cliffs and boulders rather than sand. What it has instead is four different kinds of swimming place, and knowing which is which decides the afternoon: two beaches of imported golden sand, a series of black pebble bays, lava pools that the Atlantic fills and refreshes, and built lidos with ladders into the open sea. The north takes the swell head on and closes often; the south is calm on the same day.
Golden sand behind two breakwaters, and the calmest water on the island.
The sand was shipped in from Morocco and the bay was built to hold it, which is why this is the one place on Madeira that looks like the Algarve. The breakwaters take the swell out, so it works on days when everywhere else is closed, and the shallow end is the only real answer on the island for small children.
Worth knowing: It is the busiest beach on the west in August; the marina car park fills by eleven and the walk from the overflow is ten minutes uphill on the way back.
Funchal's own beach: a kilometre of black pebbles under the cliffs.
Four small beaches in a row, joined by a promenade, and the only stretch of sea in the city that is not a lido. The stones are the real thing - dark, round and hot by noon - so swimming shoes turn a wince into an afternoon. Reachable on foot from the west end of the Lido promenade.
Worth knowing: The bus back to the centre runs along the top of the cliff, not along the beach; the walk up is short but steep.
Funchal's municipal sea-water complex: pools, sun decks and ladders into the Atlantic.
Two pools, one of them for children, plus direct steps down into the open sea when it is calm enough. Everything a beach lacks is here - a lifeguard on a chair, showers, a café, a lift to the water - which is why it is the answer on a day when the swell has closed the pebble beaches.
Worth knowing: Entry is charged and paid at the gate; go before ten or after four in August, when the middle of the day is a queue for a sun lounger.
Rock pools cut into the lava at the end of the Lido promenade.
Volcanic basins that the sea tops up, with a restaurant above them and a ladder into deeper water. Smaller and rougher than the Lido next door, and much better for it: at low water the pools are still and warm, at high water the swell comes over the rim and it becomes a different, louder place.
Worth knowing: Check the tide before you go - this is one of the few places on the island where the hour genuinely decides whether it is worth it.
A pebble bay in the sunniest town on the island, with bars along the front.
Ponta do Sol gets more hours of sun than anywhere else on Madeira, and the beach is the town's front room: a short curve of grey stones, a pier to jump off, and places to eat within thirty steps of the water. It stays usable late, because the cliff behind keeps the light long after Funchal is in shadow.
Worth knowing: Shelves steeply into deep water a few metres out - fine for swimmers, not a paddling beach.
The old town's bathing platform, below the Santa Maria Maior church.
Terraces cut into the rock with steps into the sea, a five-minute walk from the painted doors of Rua de Santa Maria. Small, local and pleasantly unglamorous - this is where Funchal swims after work rather than where the hotels send people.
Worth knowing: Pair it with the old town rather than making it the day: it is twenty minutes from the cable car and the market.
Pebbles inside a marine reserve, reached by a cable car down the cliff.
The water here is protected, which means groupers the size of a dog come close enough to photograph and the snorkelling is the best on the island. A small cable car drops from the Christ statue to the shore; the alternative is a road with hairpins and almost nowhere to leave a car.
Worth knowing: Bring a mask. Without one this is a pleasant stony beach; with one it is the reason to come.
Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL · CC BY-SA 2.0
Praia de Machico
Machico
SandBlue Flag
The island's other imported-sand beach, ten minutes from the airport.
A wide bay in the middle of a town, which makes it the easy one: cafés and a supermarket are across the road, the water shelves gently, and the bus from Funchal stops two streets away. It is the obvious first or last afternoon of a trip, because the airport is a quarter of an hour up the coast.
Worth knowing: The eastern end, under the old fort, is quieter and has the shade; the town end has the lifeguards and everything else.
Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL · CC BY-SA 2.0
Praia da Laje (Seixal)
Porto Moniz
Pebbles
Black volcanic sand under a green cliff, with a waterfall at one end.
The one beach on the island where the sand is genuinely black and genuinely local. The cliff behind it drips all year, the water is colder than the south, and the whole thing is spectacular in the way the north coast is spectacular - which is to say, often in cloud and always worth it.
Worth knowing: The north takes the Atlantic swell head on. A red flag here is not a formality; on those days the natural pools a few minutes west are the alternative.
The island's postcard: lava pools filled by the Atlantic, with the ocean breaking a metre away.
A field of black volcanic rock that the sea fills and refreshes, fenced, laddered and lifeguarded. The water is clear and cold, the floor is rock rather than sand, and the drive across the north coast is half the day - which is why it is worth checking the swell and the tide before setting off rather than after.
Worth knowing: In a big swell the pools close and stay closed all day. The older, free pools next door are lower and rougher, and close sooner.
A wild pebble cove on the north coast, at the mouth of a green valley.
Steep grey stones, a stream coming down behind, and cliffs on both sides - the north coast doing what it does. There is a lifeguard in season and a café, and almost nobody, because it is an hour and a half from Funchal and the swell often decides the day for you.
Worth knowing: Combine it with Santana's thatched houses or the Vereda do Larano rather than driving out for the swim alone.
Nine kilometres of golden sand, and the reason people take the ferry.
One continuous beach down the whole south side of the neighbouring island, shallow, warm and almost empty outside August. The sand is credited locally with medicinal properties and sold as a treatment; whatever you make of that, it is the only place in the archipelago where you can walk on sand for two hours in a straight line.
Worth knowing: The ferry takes two and a quarter hours each way and is cancelled in a heavy swell; a day trip works, an overnight works better.
Facilities and lifeguard cover follow the municipal bathing season, which runs roughly from May to October and varies by council. A red flag is a closure, not a warning: it means the sea is beyond what the lifeguards can cover.
