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'Saude!' proposed Carlos, raising his glass in Victor's Bar at Ribeiro Frio. 'Good health! And good walking.' He tossed back the cloudy yellow punch and chased it down with a gulp of black coffee. I sipped at my glass, a little more cautiously. When you are setting out on a Madeiran levada walk, the last thing you need is a head spinning with local firewater.

Most visitors to Madeira end up on a levada walk, sooner or later. Everywhere you go in this outstandingly beautiful Atlantic island you hear of the levadas, ingenious man-made watercourses that writhe like snakes along the green hillsides. People tell you of their beauty, of the enormous extent of them - nearly 1400 miles in all, in an island less than 40 miles long. And you learn all about the head for heights that you need if you are going to tackle one of the narrow maintenance paths that follows the tortuous windings of a levada.

Fortified by lemon poncha and strong coffee, Carlos and I set out into a brisk spring morning. Below Victor's Bar we found the Levada do Furado in fast flow, channelling the water from yesterday's cloudbursts off the mountain slopes. This north side of Madeira can receive more than 80 inches of rain in a year, water tumbling from clouds blown in on the northeast trade winds.

The Levada do Furado snaked along the hillside in a tunnel of trees, a stone-built ditch two feet wide with a foot or so of racing water in it. This levada was installed a few decades ago to take excess rainfall. Along its course it collects overspill from a power station reservoir and from dozens of mountain streams, hurrying it all down to lower levels where farmers divert it to irrigate their banana groves and vegetable plots, vineyards and orchards.

Most of Madeira's levadas were built after the war, hand-cut and tunnelled through solid basalt by men pickaxeing and hammering the rock while suspended at the ends of ropes. But levada-building in the island started as far back as the mid-15th century, an era when Madeira was being colonised and cleared for agriculture by Portuguese adventurers. Hundreds of slaves and convicts died in the construction of these early levadas.

Beside the Levada do Furado ran the narrow stony maintenance path, shadowing every curve of the waterway. Soon we came across a man scything undergrowth from the banks. He glanced up under the peak of his ear-flapped cap and gave us 'Bom dia ' and a wrinkly grin. 'The levadeiro,' said Carlos. 'He looks after the levada, keeps it clean, makes sure everything is OK. Very important man.'

Overhanging the levada and screening it from the sun were gnarled heather trees, cedars with lichened trunks, bay trees, laurels, bilberry and a dozen other aromatic components of laurisilva, the original maquis-like forest of Madeira. Accompanied by the chirping of finches and the quiet gurgle of water running in the levada, it made for wonderful walking: a soothing, dreamy progress, until the path abruptly narrowed to one foot wide, a ribbon of slippery rock on the brink of a sheer drop into a deep valley.

We passed a woman, one of a walking party, spread-eagled against the rock face in fright and embarrassment. 'Vertigo,' diagnosed Carlos. 'Excuse me - just put your hand on the rock and look to the herbs. It's easy.' But she was already turning back. A wise decision on her part, I realised a little later, when the flanking fence disappeared and there was suddenly fresh air - a hell of a lot of it - between me and the treetops a thousand feet below.

'The levada is not dangerous,' Carlos had assured me before we set out, 'if you don't have vertigo, and you watch where you put your feet.' He was right. I had to concentrate hard on balance, but apprehension gave way to exhilaration as the view out over the laurisilva became more and more spectacular - precipitous forest slopes rising to the church-like rock pinnacles of the Pico das Torres and the leonine head of 6,109-ft Pico Ruivo, the Red Peak, Madeira's crowning glory.

Mosses, ferns and green and white lichens sprawled all over the wet rock wall that bounded the inner curve of the levada. We dodged through skeins of water, getting a good sprinkling. The natural reservoir of the mountains, overloaded with the previous week’s late winter downpour, was releasing its surplus. No more delicious drink than this for a thirsty walker - as clear as glass, ice-cold and earthily sweet.

The levada wriggled through a narrow gash in the mountainside, followed by a succession of little tunnels hacked out of the rock. Now came the most dramatic section of the journey, a reeling ledge between forest and sky with a majestic view wheeling slowly by: swooping green ridges and slopes falling away to the red roofs of Porto da Cruz on the north coast of the island, overhung by the stark bulk of Penha de Aguia, the Rock of the Eagle, and bounded by the blue Atlantic.

The mind boggled - and boggled again - at the nonchalant bravery of the workmen who built the Levada do Furado, and other levadas twice as hair-raising, while hanging in space at a rope's end or leaning out of giddily swaying wicker baskets. I had seen photographs of these dangling heroes at work, and now, inching along the flywalk they built into the basalt cliff, could only admire such steeliness of nerve.

Under the birdsong, sigh of wind in the trees and roar of rain-gorged rivers in the valleys, the water in the levada had been quietly whispering as an accompaniment to the walk. Now it began to chatter and gush as the path plunged into the forest once more and came abreast of a neat, barrel-roofed sluice house. 'To divide the waters of the levada,' said Carlos. 'We'll go down the hill now.'

Parting company with the Levada do Furado, we turned off the mountainous track and followed a new, narrow little levada hastening a thread of water down to lower ground. Soon the laurisilva gave way to eucalyptus groves, then the start of cultivated terraces and banana groves. The path broadened until we could stride out, dropping down into Portela and the thirsty lowlands, our heads and shoulders still pearled with mountain water.

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