Art trails in Madeira

Plus here's my first roundup of all the Edinburgh theatre and comedy previews you can book to see now in London town!

I’ve been on another little break, this time to Madeira with two lovely friends. Have you been to Madeira? It’s PARADISE! and it’s CHEAP! We kept meeting retirees who have been coming here for ‘37 years’ - since 1988, which was a boom time for package holidays (13 million overseas package holidays were taken then). One friendly lady we met in a tearoom in Funchal (the capital) told us she and her husband had been coming every year (for 37 years) but she’d also been to Australia twice, the US and a few other countries. ‘You are young! You must travel, travel, travel!’ she declared, then told us how her granddaughter is a Norland Nanny. (Her husband was silent throughout, which perhaps explained her chatty enthusiasm.) Do you know about Norland Nannies? They are the nannies to the stars and the royals! They live in and look after nursery children but the scope of their training includes baby massage, martial arts, driving in arduous conditions, child psychology, neuroscience and security training delivered by former military intelligence officers. They’re like James Bond crossed with Mary Poppins. Do I feel a new Channel 4 show coming on? Inside the Lives of Hardcore Nannies. C4 execs, if you’re reading, you know how to reach me.

Anyway, I digress. Madeira is wonderful. You can drive around the island in 3 hours but each area of the island has its own climate and foliage, with corresponding birds and insects. No surprise that Madeira is mentioned in Darwin’s Origin of Species 20 times. There were agapanthas flowers, jacaranda trees and succulents growing wild all over near the coast, bright yellow gorse at the tops of the mountains and fascinating fungus in the forests.

Madeira also has a thriving modern art scene.

Rua de Santa Maria, a cobbled street in the Old Town of the capital, Funchal, is home to the Painted Doors Project, set up by photographer José Maria Zyberchem in 2010. The project, which invites local artists to paint a door, has grown and spilled out into surrounding streets and helped to rejeuvante the area’s dining scene. There are a couple of hundred painted doors. Here’s a little selection:

The concept has spread across the island, as I found more in the fishing village of Camara de Lobos.