Fanal Forest: Walking Into Madeira's Fairytale Laurisilva

Fog doesn't usually improve a landscape. Fanal is the exception — this is a place people specifically plan around getting the fog, because it's what turns a stand of old trees into something that looks lifted out of a folk tale.

It sits on the Paúl da Serra plateau, at around 1,400m, in the northwest of the island, part of the laurisilva — the ancient laurel forest that once covered much of southern Europe and now survives, more or less intact, only here and on a few other Atlantic islands. The trees at Fanal are centuries-old Ocotea foetens, gnarled and wind-bent into shapes that look deliberately sculpted.

There are a few ways in: the full PR13 trail runs about 10km through the wider forest, or you can take the shorter, mostly downhill route from Assobiadores on the plateau, around 450m of descent rather than a long there-and-back. Porto Moniz, on the north coast, is the closest base — about 25 minutes by car.

Timing matters more here than almost anywhere else on the island: May to August gives the best odds of fog with still enough daylight to see and photograph the trees properly, and early morning is when it tends to settle in thickest. Check conditions before driving out, since a clear day here is still beautiful, just a completely different, much less otherworldly place.