PR3 Vereda do Burro: the Curral das Freiras valley descent

We’ve done PR3 with guests who skipped breakfast and regretted it by the third switchback. We’ve done it in late October with chestnuts dropping onto the path, the smell of them roasting drifting up from the village. We’ve done it in March, terraces freshly turned, an old man in a flat cap waving from his patch. Four years running Banana House in Ponta do Sol, and PR3 is the hike we save for guests who want a different shape of day. Not a ridge. Not a levada. A valley descent into a place that feels like Madeira from a hundred years ago.

Trail in three sentences

PR3 Vereda do Burro drops from Eira do Serrado (1,095m) down a steep cobbled mule path into Curral das Freiras, the village in the bowl of an ancient volcanic crater. It runs around 2.7km one-way with about 500m of pure descent, takes 90 minutes to two hours at a careful pace, and is rated easy by the official register, which is honest about distance and dishonest about your knees. Pack proper shoes, a light layer, and an appetite for chestnut soup at the bottom.

For the wider context, see our Madeira hiking guide.

Where it starts: Eira do Serrado viewpoint

Eira do Serrado is the cliff-top viewpoint above Curral das Freiras. You drive up from Funchal on the ER107 through pine forest and one-and-a-half-lane bends until the road ends at a car park and a souvenir shop that sells chestnut everything. Three minutes from the lot to the railing and the valley opens underneath you. A drop of nearly 900 metres, terraces stacked all the way down, the village a cluster of white walls at the bottom.

The trailhead sign sits just below the viewpoint. The path starts as a wide cobbled track, then narrows into a mule trail with stone steps cut into the rock. Curral das Freiras means “the corral of the nuns”, named after a 16th-century convent in Funchal that owned the valley as farmland and refuge from pirate raids. The path is older than the convent.

We park at Eira do Serrado and arrange a pickup at the bottom. Bus 81 from Funchal runs to Curral das Freiras two or three times a day, so a bus-up-walk-down loop works without a car. Taxi back up is about €12.

The descent: knees-on-fire honest warning

The official trail register calls PR3 easy. The official trail register has not done PR3 with a 78-year-old mother-in-law. We have.

Easy in the sense that there are no tunnels, no cables, nothing exposed. Not easy in the sense that you lose 500 metres in 2.7 kilometres, almost all of it on stone steps. Down is harder than up on a path like this. Your quads burn by the second switchback. Your knees take the next hour personally. We’ve seen fit ultra-runners stop to stretch halfway down.

Proper shoes matter here more than on PR1. The cobbles are smooth, polished by four centuries of foot traffic and mule hooves, slick when damp. Trail runners with grip work. Hiking boots work better. Sandals are how you end up sitting on a step waiting for help. Hiking poles, which we said to skip on PR1, earn their place on PR3. If your knees are temperamental, borrow one from the Banana House porch drawer.

About halfway down a clearing opens to the right and you get the best photo of the day: the village from directly above, the river bed slicing the valley floor, the terraces falling away like a green Roman amphitheatre.

90 minutes if you move steady. Two hours with photo stops. Two and a half if your knees start negotiating.

Curral das Freiras village: chestnuts and ginja

You arrive at the back of the church and the first thing you smell is wood smoke and roasting chestnut. Curral das Freiras runs on chestnut. The terraces grow it. The bakery makes chestnut bread, chestnut cake, chestnut soup. Festa da Castanha runs the first weekend of November and the whole valley fills with smoke, music, and queues for the soup pot.

The other thing the village runs on is ginja de tagantes, a sour cherry liqueur made in chestnut-wood barrels. Tagantes is the local cherry, smaller than the supermarket kind, with a sharper bite. The liqueur lands somewhere between port and grappa, served at room temperature in small glasses, sometimes with a soaked cherry in the bottom. Two glasses make the walk back up to Eira do Serrado a worse idea than it already was. We’ve made that mistake. The taxi driver was kind.

The bakery on the main square (Padaria do Carmo) sells chestnut bread fresh from the oven around 9am. Grab a loaf for the car ride home. It turns into the best toast in Ponta do Sol the next morning.

After-hike: where we eat

The local pick is Sabores do Curral, three minutes from the church on Rua do Colégio. Small dining room, family-run, menu short and chestnut-heavy. Order the chestnut soup (creamy, smoky, the colour of milky coffee), the espetada with bolo do caco, a glass of red. Bill around €15 a head with wine. They open 12 to 3 and the room fills with locals by 1pm.

If Sabores is full, the backup is Restaurante Nun’s Valley on the same street. Bigger room, more touristy, the chestnut dishes are decent. We go to Sabores first.

For dessert, the bakery does a chestnut cake (bolo de castanha) denser and less sweet than the Funchal version. Half a slice each, on the church steps, with a coffee from next door.

When to go

PR3 is hike-able year-round. The valley sits at 600m, lower than the ridges, so it stays warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the map suggests.

• November: chestnut harvest and the festival on the first weekend. Smoke, music, queues.
• March to May: terraces freshly planted, wild flowers between the stone walls, long stable weather.
• June to August: hot after 11am. Start by 8am. The cobbled path holds heat like a brick oven.
• September and October: our favourite. Warm but not punishing, fewer day-trippers, chestnut trees turning.
• December to February: dry days only. Skip after heavy rain.

For the wider seasonal picture see our best time to visit Madeira breakdown.

Permits and pairing

PR3 sits in the no-permit bucket, unlike PR1, which is the headliner of the same mountain range from the other side. If you’ve spent a hard day on PR1, give your knees 48 hours before PR3. We’ve made that mistake too. The full permit picture is in our 2026 Madeira hiking permits guide.

A nice pairing is PR3 in the morning, lunch in Curral das Freiras, then a slow drive back to Funchal via the Boca dos Namorados road, which crosses the western lip of the crater with viewpoints all the way down. Six hours door-to-door including food. The rest of the Madeira hiking guide covers the trails worth pairing across a longer stay.

FAQ

How hard is PR3 Vereda do Burro? Officially easy. In practice, a steep downhill that wears on your knees more than the distance suggests. 500m of descent over 2.7km, almost all on stone steps. Fit hikers do it in 90 minutes. Casual walkers in proper shoes do it in two hours. Anyone with knee issues should bring a hiking pole.

Can I do PR3 uphill instead? You can, and some people prefer it. The villagers walked this path uphill for centuries before the road existed. It takes about two and a half hours, your knees thank you, your lungs complain. Park at the village, take the bus or taxi to Eira do Serrado at the end. We’ve done it both ways and prefer down for the views and up for the legs.

Is PR3 suitable for kids? Older kids yes, from around age 8. The trail is not exposed and there’s no scrambling, just a long descent on stone steps. Smaller kids find the down-step rhythm exhausting and start asking how much longer at the halfway clearing. The bakery at the bottom is the bribe that works.

Can I hike PR3 without a car? Yes. Bus 81 runs from Funchal to Curral das Freiras two to three times a day. Morning bus up, taxi from the village square up to Eira do Serrado (€12), hike down, bus back to Funchal. Timetables shift seasonally.

What about PR3 in the rain? We skip it the day after heavy rain. The polished cobbles get slick and the valley walls drop the occasional rock. Misty but dry underfoot is fine, and the village in mist is beautiful.

Is the ginja worth a bottle home? Yes, if you like sour cherry liqueurs. Bottles run €8 to €15 depending on age. Look for the chestnut-wood-barrel label rather than the tourist-shop kind. Sabores do Curral sells the good bottle.

Stay a month, walk the quiet valley

Most visitors do PR1, get the photo, leave. They miss Curral das Freiras because it isn’t on the front of the postcard. They miss the bowl of the crater, the chestnut bread, the old woman pouring ginja at room temperature into a glass the size of a thimble.

Stay a month and PR3 becomes a Wednesday. You hike down, eat the soup, ride a taxi back up with a loaf in your lap, and you’re home in Ponta do Sol by 5pm with the bread still warm enough to butter.

We run Banana House year-round, one-month minimum, from €997 including bills. Seven private rooms in Ponta do Sol, an hour from Eira do Serrado, a kitchen where someone is always cooking. Pick a month. We’ll see you in the valley.