Jardim do Mar Beach

Jardim do Mar occupies a small shelf of land below towering cliffs on Madeira's southwest coast, a village of narrow cobbled lanes, banana terraces and whitewashed houses that ends at a seafront promenade running along a boulder-strewn shore. This is not a sunbathing beach in the conventional sense: the shoreline is large rounded basalt boulders and coarse pebble, and the appeal is the setting, the water and the near-total absence of crowds. Between roughly October and March the village draws a serious surfing crowd, because the point here produces one of the heaviest right-hand waves in Europe, a fast, powerful break that broke onto the international surf map in the 1990s and still attracts experienced surfers when a big northwest swell lines up. Construction of a seafront wall in the early 2000s altered the wave and remains a sore point locally, but the break still fires on the right conditions and is emphatically not a beginner spot. In summer the Atlantic settles, the surfers largely disappear, and the water off the promenade becomes calm enough for swimming from the concrete steps and ladders set into the seafront, which is how most locals get in. The village itself is worth the trip regardless: the lanes are too narrow for tour coaches, several small cafes and bars serve the promenade, and the cliff backdrop is spectacular in late afternoon light. Buses from Funchal take well over an hour and a half, so most visitors drive, descending a steep road from the ER222 above. Anyone planning to swim should check conditions carefully, as there is no lifeguard cover and the boulder shoreline is unforgiving in swell.