Madeira in the rain: what still works on a wet day, by area

You pull the curtain back, the sky is the colour of wet concrete, and the levada walk you booked the flights for is off. The instinct is to search for indoor things to do. On Madeira that is usually the wrong instinct. The better question is whether you should stay where you are or drive twenty five minutes and stand in sunshine.

Madeira is a mountain sticking out of the Atlantic, and the mountain decides the weather. The range down the middle catches the moist north easterly air, so the north coast and the uplands are cooler and wetter, and the south coast is drier. Funchal sits in the rain shadow. Average daytime temperatures there run from about 19C in winter to about 26C in summer, the coldest stretch is January to March, and May to August is the driest period. Winter can be properly wet, but in the south the rain rarely settles in for the day, and bad weather can often be escaped by moving to a different part of the island.

One number for "Madeira" is close to useless. IPMA, the Portuguese weather service, publishes a ten day and hourly forecast at ipma.pt where you choose the district and then the individual town. Look up the place you are standing in and the place you are thinking of driving to, and compare them. On a lot of days the two are completely different.

Then look out of the window at where the cloud actually sits. A grey lid over the hills behind Funchal, with the coast clear underneath it, usually means the seafront stays dry all day and the peaks above the cloud are in sun. Low cloud down at the water with steady rain is a different animal, and that is the day to go indoors.

If you are based in Funchal you have the easiest wet day on the island, because the city has enough roofed space to fill one.

Mercado dos Lavradores is the obvious first stop and it is properly covered. It opens Monday to Friday from 07:00 to 19:00 and Saturday from 07:00 to 14:00, and it is closed on Sundays and public holidays. Go early. By eleven the upper gallery is a queue of cruise passengers being handed slices of passion fruit at prices nobody agreed to in advance. The fish hall downstairs is the part worth seeing: black scabbard fish, the deep water species that ends up on every menu on the island, laid out looking like something dredged from a trench, which it is.

Blandy's Wine Lodge on Avenida Arriaga is the other reliable answer, and an hour there teaches you more about Madeira than most museums do. The Lodge Tour runs about 30 minutes and costs 17 euros with two samples, and the Premium Tour runs about 45 minutes and costs 23 euros with three. You are under the roof the whole way through the cooperage and the aging rooms.

The Sé cathedral, the Museu de Arte Sacra and the old town streets around Rua de Santa Maria fill the rest of the morning, and the seafront promenade towards Lido stays walkable in light rain. One warning about older guides and blog lists: the Madeira Story Centre closed permanently in 2015 and still appears on plenty of them. Check that anything you plan around is actually open before you set out.

On the right kind of grey day you can simply drive out of the weather.

Pico do Arieiro is 1,818 metres high, and unusually for a peak that size there is a road to the top, with a car park, a café and a shop. When cloud sits as a flat layer over the coast, you drive up through twenty minutes of grey, come out above it, and get the summits of Arieiro, Pico das Torres and Pico Ruivo, the island's highest at 1,861 metres, standing out of what looks like a white sea.

It only works when the cloud has a top to it rather than filling the whole island, so look at the mountain, or phone the café, before committing to the drive. It is also seriously cold up there, down to freezing in winter with ice on the paths, so take a coat and proper shoes even if you are only walking from the car park to the viewpoint.

Ribeiro Frio, lower down the same road, is the fallback. There is a trout farm, a couple of places to eat, and a short level walk on the west side of the road to the Balcões viewpoint that is manageable in drizzle.

The north is the wet side, so this is where you go when the rain is sitting on the south coast instead, which happens more often than visitors expect.

Porto Moniz has the Madeira Aquarium, built into the Fortaleza de São João Baptista, a replica of the old fort above the harbour. It opens every day from 10:00 to 18:00, and admission is 7 euros for adults, 4 euros for children aged 5 to 14 and 4 euros for visitors over 65. Twelve tanks and around ninety local species, and about an hour is right. The natural lava pools next door are the reason most people come, and on a rough wet day they are usually closed to swimmers, so check before you build the day around them.

The one thing to strike off your list is the São Vicente Caves and Volcanism Centre. Every second guide to Madeira still lists the caves as the perfect rainy day attraction. They have been shut since 2020, and the operator's own website currently carries a notice saying the caves and the centre are closed indefinitely for maintenance work. There is no announced reopening date. Do not drive to São Vicente for them.

What São Vicente does still have is the old village centre, the church, and the coast road east towards Seixal and Porto da Cruz, which is at its most dramatic in bad weather precisely because the sea is up. Watching Atlantic swell hit the north coast from a café window is a legitimate way to spend a wet afternoon.

The southwest corner gets less rain than almost anywhere else on the island and sees fewer visitors, which makes it a good bet when Funchal is grey.

MUDAS, the contemporary art museum above Calheta, is a serious building by the architect Paulo David and worth the drive on its own. It opens Tuesday to Saturday from 09:30 to 13:00 and from 14:00 to 17:30, and it is closed on Sundays, Mondays and public holidays. That closure catches people out constantly, because Sunday is exactly the day you have spare. Plan it for midweek.

Calheta also has the man made sand beach, which is unappealing in rain, and Ponta do Sol along the coast is the sunniest spot on the island by local reputation and a reasonable lunch target when everything east of it is under cloud.

The hills behind Funchal are a wet day in their own right. The cable car runs from the seafront up to Monte every day except Christmas Day, from 08:45 to 17:45. A return ticket is 22 euros and a single is 16, children under 7 travel free and 7 to 14 year olds pay half. Going up in cloud is atmospheric rather than disappointing, and at the top you have the Monte Palace gardens and the church of Nossa Senhora do Monte. The wicker toboggan run starts here too, though it stops when the road is wet, so treat it as a bonus rather than the plan.

Do check the altitude of anywhere you book in winter. Even at 300 metres it is noticeably cooler than at sea level, and the high plateau is properly cold.

Where you sleep matters more in a grey week than a sunny one. A room with a wide view over the bay is the difference between feeling trapped and being able to sit with a coffee, watch the showers cross the water and time your walk for the gap between them. If you are choosing a base in the hills above Funchal for exactly that reason, Madeira with Views specialises in houses and apartments picked for what you can see from them.

Some things on Madeira become worse than disappointing in rain.

• Levada walks with tunnels or unfenced drops. Levada do Caldeirão Verde, Caldeirão do Inferno and the Rabaçal tunnels turn into cold running water in the dark, and the exposed sections are where people get hurt. Walk the wide, fenced levadas instead, or wait. Conditions improve after a couple of rain free days even in winter.
• The Arieiro to Ruivo ridge trail. In cloud there are no views, there is water on the rock, and there is nothing to be gained.
• Long mountain drives for the scenery. The Encumeada pass and the Paul da Serra plateau are frequently inside the cloud, and the road out to Ponta do Pargo is slow at the best of times.
• The Ponta de São Lourenço walk in strong wind, which is a different hazard from rain but usually arrives with it.

IFCN, the regional forest and nature authority, publishes the classified trail network and its advice for walkers at ifcn.madeira.gov.pt. Trails do get closed after heavy rain, and the closures are there for a reason.

Without a car the timetable decides what is possible, so check it before you commit to a plan.

The bus to Porto Moniz is Rodoeste route 139. The first departure leaves Funchal at 07.35 and reaches Porto Moniz at 10.45, running as route 6 as far as São Vicente. Coming back, buses leave Porto Moniz at 12.10 and 14.10, and the 14.10 gets into Funchal at 17.05. The full north coast day is therefore an early start, about three and a half hours at the far end, and no margin if you miss the afternoon bus.

Within Funchal the yellow Horários do Funchal buses are frequent and the city is compact enough that a taxi across town is not expensive. For the mountains and the southwest, a hire car or a driver is realistically the only way to keep the option of chasing the weather.

Does it rain a lot in Madeira? It depends entirely on where you stand. The north coast and the mountains are cooler and wetter, the south coast is in the rain shadow, and May to August is the driest stretch. Showers on the south coast usually pass quickly.

Can I still do a levada walk in the rain? Some of them, yes. Stick to wide, fenced, low altitude levadas and avoid anything with tunnels or exposed drops. Check IFCN for closures first, because trails are shut after heavy rain.

Are the São Vicente Caves open? No. They have been closed since 2020 and the official site currently says they are closed indefinitely for maintenance, with no reopening date. Many guides still list them.

What is the single best thing to do on a rainy day in Madeira? Drive up to Pico do Arieiro when the cloud is a flat layer rather than general murk. The road goes to 1,818 metres and you come out above the weather.