Prior to our trip to Madeira next year I have just bought a very good map of the island. It is called the Madeira Bus & Touring Map and is published by Discovery Walking Guides Ltd ( ISBN 1-904946-10-0 ) . This is bang up to date (June 2005) and , as the name suggests features a lot about the buses on the island.

One side of the sheet features a large-scale map of Funchal showing all the main sites plus lots of information about the buses. The main streets are annotated to show which bus routes go along them. There is also a separate list of these routes showing the main streets they cover. There are also mini-articles on such as bus timetables , frequency and "bus etiquette" .

The other side of the sheet is a detailed road-map of the whole island . This also hows the long-distance bus routes , walking paths and the general terrain of the island. There is also information about useful web-sites for the island.

I bought my copy via Amazon and it cost me £4.00 including p&P . The cover price for the map is £2.50 or €4, well worth it in my opinion.