Twenty seconds of The Eastern Edge, written for this very spot. On the tour it plays by itself as you arrive.
This is the detour almost everyone skips on the way to the São Lourenço trailhead, and almost everyone should make it. Pull off, walk to the edge, and hold onto your hat, because the wind out here on the eastern tip is a force of its own.
What stops you is the colour. The cliffs drop straight into the north Atlantic in bands of rust, ochre and deep red. That's iron in the volcanic rock, five million years old, slowly oxidising in the salt air. This is the oldest land in Madeira, the part that came up out of the sea first, and it's been scoured by the wind down to its bare bones. No trees, no green, no shade: just raw geology and two oceans.
Look out to the horizon. On a clear day, that low golden shape in the distance is Porto Santo, Madeira's little sister island, the one blessed with the nine kilometres of soft beach this island never got. Below you, the colours of the rock against the two different blues of the sea look almost edited. They're not. This is the real, unfiltered end of the island.
Local tip: genuinely mind the wind here: it can shove you, and the edges are unguarded in places, so keep back and keep children close. Morning light makes the red rock glow, and it's calmer before the afternoon wind builds.
