The levada walks of northern Madeira

The north of Madeira is the island's wettest, wildest flank, and its levadas reflect it. Where the southern channels thread sunlit terraces, the northern ones burrow into the heart of the Laurisilva — the relict subtropical laurel forest that has cloaked these slopes since before the island was settled, and which UNESCO inscribed as a World Natural Heritage Site in December 1999. This is the largest surviving laurel forest on Earth, and the northern levadas are the only practical way to walk through its interior.

These are working irrigation canals, some dug in the 17th and 18th centuries to carry the abundant rainfall of the north and the central peaks down to the drier farmland of the coast and the south. The walker follows the maintenance path beside the channel — flat by design, but routed across vertiginous escarpments, behind waterfalls, and through tunnels hewn by hand through solid basalt. The signature northern experiences are exactly these: the four tunnels and 100-metre cascade of the Levada do Caldeirão Verde (PR9) above Santana; the dripping kilometre-long tunnel of the Levada da Ribeira da Janela in the far northwest; and the photogenic waterfalls of the Levada Fajã do Rodrigues (PR16) deep in the São Vicente valley.

A few practical truths govern walking here. Tunnels are routine — carry a head-torch and expect ankle-deep water; the longest, on the Ribeira da Janela, runs well over a kilometre. Exposure is real: many paths hug an unguarded channel above a deep ravine, and the basalt is slick when wet, which in the north is often. Weather is the north's defining variable — Paúl da Serra and the Fanal plateau can be in cloud while the coast is clear, so the Fanal's ancient, fog-wreathed Til trees are best appreciated as the atmospheric spectacle they are rather than a guaranteed view.

The official network is the PR (Pequena Rota) register maintained by the regional forestry authority (IFCN) and published by the Madeira tourism board. Note that several iconic northern routes are partly or wholly off the official register — the long Levada da Ribeira da Janela tunnel walk is not a classified PR — and that since 2024–2026 the most popular trails (PR9, PR11, PR14, PR15, PR16 and others) require paid online booking through the SIMplifica portal, currently €4.50 per adult. One naming caveat worth stating plainly: the official PR9 runs all the way to the Caldeirão do Inferno, so the Inferno is the full PR9, not a separate spur; the code PR9.1 belongs to a short, accessible "Um Caminho para Todos" path between Queimadas and Pico das Pedras — a different walk entirely from the dramatic Inferno extension that guidebooks colloquially label "PR9.1."

Ranked roughly from gentlest to most committing, the northern essentials run from the 1.5 km stroll to the Balcões viewpoint (PR11) above Ribeiro Frio, through the forest immersions of the Levada do Rei (PR18) and Levada dos Cedros (PR14), to the full-day, eleven-tunnel epic of the Caldeirão Verde–Inferno.