There is no official difficulty grade for this walk
IFCN publishes no difficulty grading for any Madeira trail. We checked three ways: the official register, the trail information panels, and the governing law — which contains no occurrence of the words for “difficulty” or “grade” at all.
So every “Easy / Moderate / Hard” you have read about this trail is somebody’s invention. What does exist is a free-text hazard box on the official panel, and that is what we reproduce below. It matters, because a walk one site grades “moderate” can carry an official vertigo warning.
What the official panel actually warns about
Reported as IFCN publishes it. Note the absences as well as the entries — a warning that appears on other trails and not on this one is telling you something.
Do not approach the cliff edge. There are many places where the ground is not safe.
No shade and no water anywhere on the route.
What the panel does not say
PR8 carries no official vertigo warning and no torch requirement. Both appear on other Madeira trails, so their absence here is informative rather than an oversight. The hazard on this trail is the ground: unsafe edges, and nowhere to shelter or refill.
How busy it is, measured rather than guessed
This is the number 1 trail on the island by recorded demand: 32,445 visitors between July and November 2025, which is 17.4% of every booked trail visit in that period.
Three things that run against the usual advice
- The peak month is September, at 22.9% — later in the year than most guides assume.
- Saturday is the quietest day of the week at 12.7%, and Sunday is the busiest. “Avoid the weekend” is bad advice here.
- The crush is 09:00 to 11:00, easing sharply after 13:00. Under a slot system that is directly actionable: the afternoon slots are the ones still free.
What it costs, and the word that misleads
Booking is compulsory. A slot on this trail costs €4.50.
The 1, 3 and 7-day rates are not passes, and IFCN’s own FAQ is emphatic about it. They grant no free or unlimited access, every trail still needs its own slot booking, and there is no way to buy a multi-day rate directly — you book the trails and the system applies the cheapest pricing at checkout. “Pass” is the searchers’ word, and no other page corrects it.
Filmed and published by Greg on the Move.
We do not publish trail status, on purpose
Statuses changed twice in the six weeks before this page was written, and being wrong about a mountain closure is a safety failure rather than an inconvenience. A hand-copied list here would be stale within a week. Check the official sources on the day you walk.