Funchal - cleaning up

After a continuing stormy and rainy night, the day dawned with blue skies and warmth in Funchal.

Nobody wanted to get in the way but we wanted to pay our respects and show some kind of solidarity with these wonderful people of Madeira. It was relatively easy to walk just down the road and look from safe and detached vantage points at the miraculous cleaning up that is taking place.

The atmosphere was very strange - sad, stunned, unreal .... so many words and yet it is so hard to convey. People were out, walking, sort of dazed, taking photos although we will never lose these memories.

There was a business like normality about Funchal. Diggers, workmen, lots and lots of trucks getting things sorted.

I met up with two friends who had been staying in the Old Town. They had been evacuated and one of them told me that it was far worse than any of us had seen on the TV. Their replacement hotel had no electricity and no lights etc and talking to them made me realise just how cossetted and spoiled we had been.

The sun is shining. I have taken a photo of Reids and palm trees. Madeira is still there, still welcoming, still magnificent - and she will come through this nightmare.....

my pics on Twitter from this morning