PR13.1 Vereda da Palha Carga: the quieter Fanal-area trail

Most people drive up to Fanal, take the same photo of the same cow tree everyone else has on their phone, and drive back down. On the same Paúl da Serra plateau, signed from the same road, there’s a trail almost nobody walks. PR13.1 Vereda da Palha Carga is short, undramatic on paper, and skipped by every guidebook we’ve read in four years of running Banana House twenty-five minutes away.

We send guests here when the Fanal car park is rammed and the 25 Fontes queue starts at the upper Rabaçal viewpoint. Same plateau, same UNESCO laurissilva, none of the people.

The trail in three sentences

PR13.1 Vereda da Palha Carga runs 1.8 km linear from Louro da Gota on ER-209 down to the 25 Fontes lagoon, dropping from 1,328m to 970m through high-altitude heath and into the upper laurissilva. About 45 minutes one-way at a walking pace, easy to moderate, mostly downhill on the way in (so plan the climb back). The €4.50 permit is the same SIMplifica booking the rest of the Madeira hiking network uses, and you can still skip the broken government portal by going through madeira.fun/hiking instead.

Where it starts

The trailhead is a roadside pull-in on ER-209, the road that crosses Paúl da Serra east to west. Coming from Ponta do Sol you drive up through Canhas, onto the plateau, and follow signs for Rabaçal. About two kilometres before the Rabaçal turn-off, on the right, there’s a small signed stand for PR13.1 at a spot called Louro da Gota. Easy to miss the first time. We’ve driven past it twice ourselves.

The first 100 metres of PR13.1 share the path with PR13 Vereda do Fanal. After that the trails fork: PR13 heads north toward the Fanal forestry house, PR13.1 swings south-west and drops toward the Rabaçal valley. The fork is signed, but the sign is small and weather-beaten. If you find yourself climbing rather than descending after ten minutes, you took the wrong branch.

Parking is whatever room you can find on the verge. Not a real car park. Pull two wheels onto the grass, leave room for the farm trucks, walk back to the trailhead. In summer there might be three other cars. In winter you’ll have the road to yourself.

What you actually walk through

The first stretch is high-altitude heath, the open scrubby landscape that covers most of Paúl da Serra. Knee-high heather, gorse, and tufts of Festuca donax (the palha carga grass the trail is named for) that look like spiky pale-yellow brooms sticking out of the rock. In June and July there are wildflowers. In November the whole plateau goes copper.

You drop through a few switchbacks and the vegetation changes fast. The heath gives way to laurel and til, the canopy closes overhead, and you’re inside the same laurissilva you’d find on PR13 or PR14, just from a different angle. The trees here aren’t the gnarled thousand-year-olds of the Fanal meadow. They’re younger, denser, more tangled.

A few features worth knowing about:

• Ribeira dos Cedros crossing. Midway down there’s a small stream crossing, usually a step over wet rocks, sometimes a proper splash in winter.
• The viewpoints. Two natural openings in the canopy give you sightlines into the Ribeira da Janela valley and across to the Rabaçal escarpment. Both unmarked. We always sit ten minutes at the second one.
• The Levada junction. Near the end you meet either Levada Nova do Rabaçal or Levada das 25 Fontes. From there it’s a flat levada walk to the lagoon itself.
• The lagoon. Same destination PR6 brings you to, except you’ve arrived from the back side with about one-fiftieth of the foot traffic.

The palha-carga grass that gives the trail its name is endemic to Madeira and only grows on the high plateau. Locals used to cut it for animal bedding (palha meaning straw, carga meaning load). The name has been on this path longer than the trail signs have.

Combining with PR13 Fanal or PR14 Cedros for a full Fanal day

This is where PR13.1 earns its keep. As a standalone hike it’s 90 minutes return and you’ve barely warmed up. As a stitch between the bigger trails of the western plateau, it’s the connector we keep recommending.

The Fanal sampler. Drive up to the Fanal forestry house, walk the first hour of PR13 Vereda do Fanal to see the meadow and the cow trees, then drive fifteen minutes to the Louro da Gota trailhead and walk PR13.1 down to the Levada junction and back. Half a day, two different forests.

The cedars + heath day. Hike PR14 Levada dos Cedros in the morning (the misty levada through the laurissilva), drive up onto Paúl da Serra for lunch, then walk PR13.1 in the afternoon for the open-plateau contrast. Two trails twenty minutes apart that feel like different countries.

The back door to 25 Fontes. If you’ve already done PR6 from the standard trailhead and want to see the lagoon again without the queue, drop in via PR13.1. You sit at the lagoon, eat your sandwich, watch the conga line arrive from the other direction, and walk back in solitude.

That last one is our favourite.

When to go

Paúl da Serra has its own weather and pays no attention to the forecast in Funchal. Quick reads from four years of driving up here:

• March to May: wildflowers on the heath section. Yellow gorse, purple thyme, white asphodels.
• June, July, August: the canopy stays cool while the coast bakes. The lagoon is at its prettiest in late June.
• September, October: our favourite. Crowds gone, light golden across the plateau. We walk this trail in October more than any other month.
• November to February: bring serious wet weather kit. The plateau gets battered. On a clear cold day the views off the viewpoints reach all the way to Porto Moniz.

Check the Paúl da Serra forecast separately from the coastal one. The plateau can sit in cloud while Porto Moniz below is sunny. If both are showing rain we still go. If both are clear we go fast, because every other hiker on the island just had the same idea.

After the hike, drop down to Porto Moniz for the natural pools and a late lunch. Our full afternoon-in-the-area write-up is in things to do in Madeira, and it’s the natural pairing with any Paúl da Serra morning.

FAQ

How hard is PR13.1? Easy to moderate. The 1.8 km linear isn’t long, but you drop 360m on the way down and climb the same on the way back. The climb back is steady rather than steep. Most fit walkers do it in 45 minutes down, 60 minutes up.

Do I need a permit? Yes. €4.50 per person over 12, free for kids under 12. Book through madeira.fun/hiking rather than the official SIMplifica portal. Full walkthrough in our hiking permits 2026 guide.

Can I link PR13.1 to PR6 and walk back via the Rabaçal car park? Yes, and this is the long-version day. PR13.1 down to the lagoon, then PR6 out to the standard Rabaçal trailhead, then either a 4×4 shuttle or a 2 km tarmac walk back up to where you started. Plan five to six hours and arrange a lift between the two trailheads.

Is the trail well marked? The PR13.1 markers exist but they’re faded and the fork from PR13 is poorly signed. Download the GPX before you go. AllTrails and Wikiloc both have it.

What about kids? From around age 8 with patience. No exposed sections, no tunnels, no cliffs. The return climb is the hardest part.

Why is it so empty? Because it’s short, the trailhead is anonymous, and every guidebook lists PR13 Fanal and PR6 25 Fontes as the two trails to do on the plateau. PR13.1 falls between them on the map. We’re fine with that.

Stay a month and walk the trails the guidebooks miss

The full version of this island isn’t the eight famous trails. It’s the connectors, the unsigned forks, the routes that arrive at the same destinations from the back. PR13.1 is one of them. We run Banana House year-round, one-month minimum, twenty-five minutes from the Louro da Gota trailhead. Seven private rooms in Ponta do Sol on the dry sunny side, which means you can watch the cloud sitting over Paúl da Serra from the kitchen and decide over breakfast whether today’s the day.

Pick a month. We’ll see you on the heath.

For the bigger picture, start with our Madeira hiking pillar. The famous sisters are PR13 Vereda do Fanal and PR14 Levada dos Cedros.