It’s a fact that every year in the winter we have some snow in Madeira, specially in the highest peaks of the island. But this year it was not normal since in some areas we had almost 1 meter of snow.

We know that for some of you (northern europeans) it may be just another ordinary day when it snows. For us it’s like “an event”!

The first snowfall was still in late November 2020, not so normal for this month but the temperatures were low that time.

Then on the first week of January we had the biggest snowfall in the last years, since the snow in Madeira reached till 600m altitude.

In that week many local people went to the mountains to see and play with the snow, specially the families with children. The kids love to slide in the snow and throwing snowballs to each other.

But many people also take the chance to eat a meal or drink a “poncha” in the local restaurants in the mountains, like the Abrigo do Pastor or Abrigo do Poiso.

These mountains are also the playground of the best madeira running tours. Starting on Poiso, we have the Funchal Highlands Running Tour and Green Levada Running Tour. Up in Pico Areeiro we have The Peaks Quest Running Tour, and more to the west we have The Central Massif Running Tour.

Some runners of the madeira trail running community were also up there for a different type of running. Between the peaks, the most amazing trail madeira has to show, was impossible to run with all that snow.

Now the spring is coming, the travel restrictions are easing soon for some countries, and in the near future will be the time to come and enjoy the best running tours Madeira has to offer.

Madeira Trail Tours can help you with that!

Here you have some pictures and video!

 

happy new year 2021

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

We wish you a 2021 full of adventures on your favorite trails sharing special moments with your family and friends.

It’s true that 2020 was by far one of the most difficult years of the last decades but it also taught us some lessons.

We learned to value the little things, to take care of our family, to be king and respectful and also respect the planet we live in.

But one of the things this COVID pandemic taught us was also that the trails are available all year around.

We just have to enjoy them and share the passion of running them with our friends in non-competitive mode.

The trail runners had their season planned, some fo them aiming the UTMB, others trying to qualify for it. In fact, MIUT – Madeira Island Ultra Trail is one of the best qualifying races giving 5 ITRA point to the finishers.

For those who are signed in for MIUT or even for those weren’t that lucky, our MIUT® by Stages Running Tour might be the best options for the upcoming months.

By booking this running tour you have the chance to run the whole MIUT course in 3 or 4 stages. This way you have the chance to see every single detail and enjoy the beautiful landscapes in daylight.

Madeira is one of the best places in the world for trail running. Then if you’re searching for a place to prepare your next race or simply just planning your running holidays, Madeira might be the place!

We can show you every single trail madeira has to offer. We have the best madeira trail running tours for you.

What are you waiting for? When you feel you’re ready, book your flight and come to Madeira Island!

Happy New Year!!

Tripadvisor 2020 Travallers' Choice award

We are proud to announce that we’ve just been awarded with Tripadvisor 2020 Travellers’ Choice award.

This is the prize for all our daily work pleasing our guests and providing the best Madeira trail running and walking tours.

On every single tour we try to adapt the pace or the speech to all our guests in order to let them as comfortable as possible during the tour.

In the last 3 years Tripadvisor awarded us with the Certificate of Excellence, but this year we just got their highest award!

This wouldn’t be possible without the kindness of our guests by leaving us a review after the tour. We are very grateful to them!

This prize reflects our passion to show the best trail Madeira can offer for each guest.

The runners recognize Madeira Trail Tours as the one who provides the best madeira running tours.

The hikers love to share their experience in our tours. They love how we present all the fauna and flora Madeira has, and every single story we share with them.

So, if you’re not sure yet where to go in your running holidays, why not Madeira??

We have some of the best trails in the world, the weather it’s perfect for running. And the best of all… you can finish a trail run by having a dip in the ocean!

Pack your bags, choose your best trail running shoes, and book the best running tours madeira can offer you at our website! You can find them here – Running Tours.

If you’re not up to run, and you just want a relaxing tour exploring the nature, we can also help you with that. Have a look at our Walking Tours.

We’ll be waiting for your visit!

geocaching

One of my outdoor hobbies is Geocaching. But… what is this?

As some of you may know, Geocaching is something like a treasure hunting game in the real world.

The main goal of this activity is to hide some caches (a box or other container) in the best sightseeing spots, of to show some historical landmarks, or simply just have some fun outdoors.

Have a look at the official website.

One thing that i do sometimes is planning a training route with some geocaches in the way, and then just run that route and log them at the same time.

I know it’s not the best way of training but is the way i can do 2 different hobbies at the same time.

Here in Madeira Island, we have so many secret spots that in some places every corner is a different world. And some geocaches takes us to these stunning spots.

In some of our Walking Tours or Running Tours we have some caches along the route, and if we have time, you can log each one.

In the future if we have some people asking for geocaching, we might even think about having exclusive geocaching tours available.

When i travel to other countries, i always search for some geocaches but i would love to go on a specific geocaching tour. This way i would for sure book this experience.

So… maybe we’ll have some good news soon from Madeira Trail Tours.

Global Running Day

We celebrate Global Running Day on 3rd June in order to encourage everyone to get moving and being conscious of all it’s positive health benefits.

Due to the present social restrictions forced by covid-19, it’s even more challenging to find a way to stay active and healthy. But this can’t be an excuse to be sedentary and store your running shoes in the closet.

Like many other economic sectors, all the Running Tour companies had very difficult times with no guests to guide and without any recovery forecast for the next weeks.

Despite this, we have to keep positive and be ready when we start the madeira running tours again.

That’s why we had to join this movement with our partners of RunningTours.Net. Dinarte (Madeira Trail Tours founder) did his 10km jogging to help achieving the goal of 1.000km.

Raoul from RunningTours.Net called all the Tour Guides to reach this goal together and celebrate Global Running (Tour) Day.

We should also post a picture of a monument or nice view in the area and use #globalrunningday #globalrunningtourday hashtags in social media.

Searching for those hashtags we’re happy to see so many people celebrating Global Running Day in their way.

Running with family…

in a small group of friends…

or with their pets…

Everything should be an excuse to go outside and keep moving!

We are celebrating today, but it’s true that we celebrate everyday in any trail Madeira has to offer.

Every single day we are grateful to share all these beautiful trails with Madeira trail running community.

For now we share them online, soon we’ll host the best trail running tours in Madeira Island.

Till then, keep an eye on our website, and keep following us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube accounts.

Happy Global Running Day!

New Website

As some of you might notice, we published some days ago our new and refreshed website madeiratrailtours.com.

It’s the same address, but almost everything is new and refreshed for a better navigation on our content.

After 4 years of running our tours, we clearly noticed that we needed to do something more than just a static page for our tours.

So, we left our old joomla framework and built this new one based on wordpress CMS framework.

Our main concern when planning was to provide you a better experience while exploring the website, speed up loading process, and give you better content with some new posts, new pictures, and everything more up to date.

It’s now easier to find our tours, and to select which one is better for you.

Website Content

For the Trail Running Tours, we have now the option to select one or more Daily Running Tours shared with other guests on fixed days for a lower price if you’re coming alone.

For the Private Running Tours, you have the same tours as in the Daily Running Tours, but here you don’t have to share with other guests. It’s just you and the guide.

We also have some special packs:

Madeira Island it’s not all about trail running… So we also added some great Walking Tours for the one who would love to see beautiful places but more calmly and also together with family.

Like the Running Tours, we also have the Daily Walking Tours and the Private Walking Tours. Of course we had to give you the same opportunity to have discount on the Multi-Day Walking Tours.

We have now our Blog section, where this post will go, and where you’ll have some news and interesting articles about the island and our madeira trail running activities.

We will have a page where you can book other partners activities and we’ll always post new pictures and videos.

Booking our activities it’s more comfortable, easier and safer with the SSL certificate.

And of course we had to build it responsive to mobile, as most of our visitors come this way.

Have a look and tell us what you think!

lockdown finished

Today 11th May, we are happy to announce that in Madeira the lockdown for outdoor activities is finished.

We are now free again to explore nature by every single madeira trail.

Of course we don’t have any tourists so far for the trail running tours and for the walking tours, but we’ll start going off to every single trail madeira can offer you in order to prepare our future tours.

It’s been almost 2 months almost no one walks or runs in the madeira trails, and of course some of them might be full of grown weeds.

In the next weeks we’ll try to cover all tracks we have on our tours and clean some weeds blocking the trail to prepare them for our guests in the future.

We’ll start running madeira highest trails up to the summit of the island, Pico Ruivo.

Then we’ll follow some levadas and trails in the forest, and to finish we’ll run by the stunning coastal trails.

It’s so good that we the lockdown is finished for madeira running enthusiasts, since everybody is tired of the same urban courses around their house.

Today on social media we started to see a big part of madeira trail running community posting pictures in the trails.

We can’t wait to host again the best running tours madeira can offer you.

So, don’t forget when you come to madeira running tours and walking tours is the best thing to do.

Madeira Trail Tours will be always ready to provide you an unforgettable experience!

See you soon!

We are proud to hold the CLEAN & SAFE badge given by Portugal Tourism Office, to identify the tourism companies that comply with health measures in order to fight against the spread of covid-19.

From the first day safety is our main concern, and we’ll make sure it keeps like this for a long time. That’s why we are now taking all the health measures to provide you a Clean & Safe tour in the future when you come to visit us.

Of course we all know the next months will be hard for every tourism companies, but this is the way we have now to show we care about our own and every guest safety.

We will implement some mandatory health measures from now, such as:

  • The guides will wash their hands frequently with water and soap or 70% alcoholic gel;
  • Avoid breathe directly to the guests and cough or sneeze to the elbow;
  • Keep a safety distance between all the guests;
  • The guides will measure their temperature everyday;

We will also ask our guests to comply with some of these safety measures.

All the touched surfaces of our car will be disinfected before and after the tours making sure they keep Clean & Safe.

We’re sure this will be a temporary situation, but we’re also know you will totally understand.

Clean & Safe

Have a look to some of our Running Tours and Walking Tours! We will be waiting for you!