Today we had a trip on a tour of the west of Madeira, first travelling alongside crops of bananas then passing sugar cane plantations.  There was a brief visit to a little village made famous by Sir Winston Churchill then up many winding steep roads beside narrow hillside terraces and steep rocky mountains to the plateau of Fanal.  There we were reminded of parts of Scotland as we walked up a hill with cows grazing nearby and extensive views to the mountains all around.  We were disappointed that the famous lava sea pools at  Porto Moniz were closed due to the sea conditions although they opened shortly before we left but it was then too late to go swimming.  On the return journey the driver showed us the dangerous old road which was hardly the width of a car and clung to the sides of steep sea cliffs even passing under a waterfall on the north coast.  Most of that road is closed now and improved roads with several tunnels have opened up the area enabling the locals to take a short time to travel to Funchal whereas it used to take many hours to do the journey.  The very informative bus driver was amazingly skilful in negotiating very steep narrow precipitous roads and hairpin bends.