Drinking in the views

After all, being in the news is generally considered a bad thing.

Especially so since ‘Man not robbed on Saturday night out’ or ‘Student prank makes everyone laugh’ are not going to hit the headlines.

Consequently, when a place one hadn’t even heard mentioned for 30 years – and that from an elderly grandmother who once went there on a cruise – suddenly dominates world headlines, you can pretty much guarantee that a ‘bad thing’ has happened.

And so it had.

Seemingly moments after deciding to go there (even if one wasn’t quite sure where ‘there’ was), the Portuguese island of Madeira was in the news after being deluged by flash flooding, mud slides and rockfalls, killing 42.

Still, everything was more or less back to normal come my holiday, the tour operator assured me. And Madeira, I had now discovered, was absolutely nothing to do with the Canary Islands, or the Azores (see – I wasn’t so completely ignorant as to where it was) but was one of an archipelago of four islands adrift in the Atlantic, 375 miles off the coast of Morocco – a speck of rock 35 miles long and 13 miles wide.

And what an extraordinary place: great green daggers of volcanic rock covered in thick vegetation (the word ‘lush’ could have been invented for Madeira) stabbing 6,000ft into the sky, split by vertiginously steep verdant deep ravines, with, in the populated areas, villas capped with terracotta tiles creeping assiduously up the sides, clinging on precariously by their fingernails, seemingly ever ready to topple thousands of feet down, and roads zigzagging violently up from the shore towards the mountain tops until the point at which the sides are so steep even asphalt wouldn’t stick.

No place, then, for those without a head for heights.

Unfortunately, I get a nosebleed on the escalators in Debenhams.

Indeed, on a trip to see the second highest sea cliff in the world – Capo Girao, where the cliffs plunge 1,900ft straight down to the sea – at least one of the party of visitors I was with only managed the merest glance, a fleeting look, a slight peep-ette, one might say, before scuttling away in a distinctly undignified way on all-fours, head spinning.

The locals now like to compare the island to a Swiss cheese, so many are the road tunnels paid for by the EU since Portugal’s entry to the Common Market (there: Common Market. That ages me).

Our tour guide even joked that so much of other people’s taxes had been spent on schools, sports facilities and travel infrastructure that we were really on a trip to inspect what we had paid for.

I thought of saying, “Well, actually I’d rather like my money back, thank you very much”, but so disarmingly had the guide joked about it I merely bit my lip, drawing not even a drop of blood.

Actually, on a trip to the village of Porto Moniz at the far western end of the island, so scary did the old road look creeping around the headland, hundreds of feet above the sea and covered with rocks from the cliffs above, I was actually grateful that the EU had spent my money on a new system of tunnels and bridges.

I was only grateful out of sheer terror, I should add, before Denis McShame, the Rt Hon member for Brussels, sends me an application form for the European Movement.

And I soon regained my usual visceral hatred of the EU once the fear had subsided, and I was no longer in a place where I seemed to find it necessary to travel hunched up in a ball on the floor of a minibus.

Madeira is of course most famous for its export of Madeira wine (and I wasn’t totally surprised to find the wine was named after the island rather than vice versa), which comes in various styles, each named after the grape variety it is made from – Sercial being the dryest and lightest, and Malmsey the sweetest and darkest.

I knew I had to remain vigilant on my visit, as if anyone could drown themselves in a butt of Malmsey, as Shakespeare had the Duke of Clarence do in Richard III.

Indeed, to hone my nerves to razor sharpness I tossed down a couple of double vodkas at Gatwick at five in the morning, figuring being 30,000ft in the air in a metal tube is not the most natural of places to be.

I mean, if we were meant to fly I’m sure God would have made sure we were half-drunk the whole time.

Having said that, in order to properly research my trip to Madeira, as soon as I’d decided I was going, I whipped down my reference books; standing on which I could reach my piggy bank marked Emergency Alcohol Fund and hightailed it to Gordon’s wine bar in London where I learnt to fully appreciate Madeira’s contribution to world culture.

Gordon’s, fortunately, is the merest stumble from Embankment on the way back to Oxford.

Probably Madeira’s next most famous export is that prancing, preening show pony Cristiano Ronaldo, late of Old Trafford, who first played for the amateur club Andorinha on the island.

He will undoubtedly be scythed apart like an effete, pomaded Romano Brit by rampaging Anglo Saxon Wayne Rooney at the forthcoming World Cup.

Thanks to its location, Madeira enjoys (if a lump of rock can be said to ‘enjoy’ anything) an average year-round temperature of about 21C, making it an ideal escape for those seeking to get away from our own seemingly endless bitter winter.

However, to be honest, I’m not really a summer person.

Generally, I figure if I can get up in the morning, dress in thermals, shirt, jumper, thick suit, coat, hat and scarf, and then go out and still think it’s a bit chilly, the temperature is just about right.

Sitting, though, under the palm trees in the garden of the hotel Quinta do Monte, in the hilltop town of Monte, thousands of feet above the island’s capital Funchal, cooled by an Atlantic breeze, sipping one of the island’s dry white wines, eating traditional Madeiran vegetable soup followed by steak on Madeira stone-baked bread with garlic butter, even I thought things didn’t get much better than this.

Monte is best known for its ‘toboggan’ (a kind of wicker basket you sit in while two men push you downhill) ride down the precipitous road leading to Funchal, which, in turn, is probably best known for the cable car returning to Monte.

Could I, I pondered, come to Madeira and not do two of the things it is most famous for?

Well, let’s put it this way – I didn’t disgrace England in the eyes of the islanders. Not once did I vomit, faint or have a panic attack. Didn’t look much, though.

A certain Madeiran export helped, mind, and not of the sort which kicks footballs.