The catch at Sentido Galomar

Galomar has no dinner restaurant of its own for half board. The supplement buys a buffet dinner at the Ondamar, the main restaurant of Sentido Galosol next door, from 6pm to 9pm, with themed international evenings cooked with regional produce and a terrace over the sea. Galosol is not an adults-only hotel, so the room is shared with families. Breakfast is the adults-only meal, at the Atlantis, set into the cliff above the sea, which also serves Madeiran cooking à la carte at lunch and dinner, with a table booked ahead. On Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve the Ondamar holds gala dinners that carry a compulsory supplement for every half-board guest.

The lifts take you down the cliff to the Lido Galomar, built on the volcanic rock, with a large saltwater pool, a children's pool, lifeguards, a bar and the Manta Diving Centre. It belongs to the resort but is open to the public, and the one part of it the hotel lists for adults, the West Platform, is closed. There is no sand: you reach the sea by steps from small sun terraces at water level. The nearest beach, Praia dos Reis Magos, is pebbles, 11 minutes east on foot. The adults-only space is the building itself, its clifftop seawater pool of about 100 m², the terraces and the spa.

Caniço de Baixo is a resort village on the cliffs of Santa Cruz, 16 minutes by car from the Sé in Funchal, so the old town, the market and the cable car make an outing rather than an evening stroll. Bus 555 runs from Ponta da Oliveira into Funchal every day except Christmas Day. The village's restaurants and bars are close by, but anything beyond them is a climb: the church in Caniço proper is 37 minutes on foot, uphill, and the Cristo Rei statue at Garajau is 46 minutes. Parking is in a public car park at €5 a day, which cannot be reserved. The airport, on the other hand, is only 12 minutes away.

The Garden View, Side Sea View and Sea View doubles come with twin beds that are pushed together and made up as a king with a topper; a king-size bed proper belongs to the Double Room Cliff Balcony and the Suite Side Sea View. The hotel publishes no room sizes. The outlook matters as much as the bed: the Garden View rooms are on the west side of the building and look over the garden rather than the sea, and the Side Sea View rooms see the water at an angle. Every room has a balcony or terrace, blackout curtains and a 40-inch TV, with a bathtub or a shower depending on the room.

The Manta Diving Centre at the lido dives a house reef of four sites, from 5 to 34 metres, in the Garajau Partial Nature Reserve, created in 1986 as Portugal's first exclusively marine reserve. It opens from 1 March to 6 January, Monday to Saturday, from 8.45am to about 5pm, and it also runs night dives. A winter break between the second week of January and the end of February misses it altogether, and a diving week has a rest day built in on Sunday. Groupers, barracuda and parrotfish are the reserve's regulars; manta rays are occasional visitors, not a promise. Kayaks and paddleboards are for hire at the lido.