Santana is the little town on Madeira's north-east coast that has made a living out of its roofs. The traditional houses here are steep A-frames of timber with thatched roofs sweeping almost to the ground, painted in red, white and blue, and a few of them are kept up for visitors to look at. They are charming and slightly improbable, like a child's drawing of a house, and they say a lot about how people built with local materials on a steep, wet island.
About 8,800 people live in the municipality, so there is fuel and food here, and the ride to this side of Madeira is one where you will be glad to have both. The north coast is greener, wetter and more rugged than the sunny south. The roads out of town climb into terraced farmland, then into forest, with sharp hairpins, steep gradients and a surface that gets slick when the clouds come in. The cloud often does come in, because the north-east trade winds push damp air up against the mountains, and a clear morning can end in drizzle at altitude.
Above Santana the landscape turns to laurel forest, the laurisilva, which is a UNESCO World Heritage listing and a remnant of a vegetation that once covered much of southern Europe. Walking trails start from the heights toward Pico Ruivo, the island's highest peak, and the levadas, the old irrigation channels cut along the hillsides, carry water from the wet north to the dry south. You will see farm plots clinging to slopes that look too steep to stand on. Nearby places such as Faial and São Jorge are small farming and fishing villages worth rolling through slowly.
Riding here requires patience more than speed. Traffic can be slow behind lorries, tunnels appear suddenly on the coast road and can be damp inside, and fog can drop visibility to a few metres. Choose a dry day if you can, wear a proper waterproof, and finish with something warm in town. The poncha, the local sugarcane spirit with honey and lemon, is a Madeiran institution, but it belongs after the bike is parked.