OK, kids, let’s put the fun back into Funchal

“QUERY warm, paintable, bathable, comfortable, flowery.” So read Winston Churchill’s admirably concise checklist, telegraphed in 1949 to a contact in Madeira who was able to tick every box.

For 50 years before that and more than 50 since, the mountainous, Portuguese island has been luring British visitors of a certain age, attracted by its dependably pleasant climate — 24C (75F) average in summer, 20C (68F) in winter — and a genteel, low-key ambience ensured by the complete absence of beaches. With a longitude just west of Co Kerry, you don’t even need to change your watch.

For the likes of Churchill, there was only one place to stay. Reid’s Palace was built in 1891 by a Scotsman who had arrived in Madeira as a 14-year-old cabin boy and made his fortune from the famous wine. It quickly established itself as a hotel of global renown. A majestic pink edifice looking down haughtily on the capital Funchal, its golden age is encapsulated in the photographs that bedeck its panelled corridors: George Bernard Shaw being taught to tango on the croquet lawn, Edward VIII in his bathers, and a framed page from The Sketch, depicting a tulip-capped flapper diving majestically off a cliff — with the caption, “Lady Prudence Jellicoe in mid-air”.

But the British clientele grew older, and poorer, and now Madeira in general, and Reid’s in particular, is obliged to broaden its client base. Russians now bring in the big money, and lured by a kids-go-free offer and a complimentary children’s club, young North European families are filling the place up.

So loudly does the hotel trumpet its Fun@Reid’s children’s programme that I imagined our three — Kristjan, 11, Lilja, 9, and Valdis, 7 — being whisked away by trumpeting clowns on arrival. But they were still with us as we followed a bellboy through a regal century of hotel history, past the Edwardian billiard room, the glittering Art Deco cocktail bar, then up, down and along a bewildering series of staircases and hushed corridors into the Sixties wing that housed our adjoining rooms. Number of rival children encountered en route: 0. Number of euro-fumbling gratuity dilemmas already endured: 3.

Succour for all lay within. As I planted a full, lingering kiss on the notice announcing that our minibar was complimentary and would be restocked each morning, the children broached the connecting door, each sporting a junior bathrobe and an incredulous beam. On each bed sat a beribboned teddy; before the bulb- bordered dressing-room mirror in their marbled bathroom lay an array of winsome soap animals, stamped Bvlgari. My wife surveyed it all from an armchair, already regally at home.

The family’s dining debut at Reid’s open-air restaurant, surrounded by elegant, whispering couples and a moon-dappled Atlantic, was, as the pundits would have it, a big ask for the little ones. Every bicker and whine seemed amplified into a riot, and after a long journey — Madeira is far nearer to Casablanca than Lisbon — there were plenty of both. I finished the first course hissing threats, and the second in a state of ruinous and unsightly alcoholic indifference. The kids’ club couldn’t open soon enough. We’d already spotted its appealing headquarters from our sixth-floor balconies: a thatched chalet fronted by a sparkling new pool, and framed by palms and hibiscus.

It looked almost too good to be true, and in most important ways was. The hotel’s website had informed us of a daily programme that offered the under-12s activities from face-painting to bingo, with a host of extracurricular sports and excursions. “I bet the other children won’t talk English,” muttered our seven-year-old as I led them up to the chalet’s palisade the following morning. A moment later, watching the four current inmates totter and crawl out of a Wendy house, we realised that they wouldn’t talk at all.

Peering circumspectly at our children as if at some previously unencountered species, the young women staffing the club were nothing like the gung-ho Macarena cheerleaders we had encountered at humbler resorts around the Med. An inquiry about excursions was met with polite shrugs; I could hardly protest as my children sidled away to the hotel’s main pool. On the plane, two gins to the good, my wife and I had wondered if five days would be enough to accustom us to the luxury of a holiday not exclusively timetabled for the dawn-to-dusk satisfaction of juvenile whims; in fewer than five minutes it had all been snatched away.

With pampered, childless lolling off an agenda that had contained nothing else, we wearily extended our poolside lounger enclave. There were plenty of other children around, but straight-backed and Alice-banded under their parental parasols, their silent, graceful presence seemed a cruel counterpoint. Particularly when Kristjan announced his arrival by vaulting bottom-first into the deep end with a bestial roar, sending an arc of water over outside tables painstakingly laid for lunch. On the one hand, holiday precedent had taught our lot that this was how all children — and indeed their own father — behaved at swimming pools. But on the other, why couldn’t they please, please, just please shut up?

Reid’s had welcomed Churchill with a huge illuminated V-sign, and before the manager dusted it off for us we decamped to the hotel’s cliff-base quayside (accessed via lift, and incorporating a wonderful sea pool). If there was no Fun@Reid’s, I vowed, then, that we would make our own.

A short while later, our two eldest and I were gingerly straddling a large inflatable cylinder, lashed to a grinning operative’s jet-ski. A cursory thumbs-up, and suddenly we were being yanked across a lively Atlantic at intemperate velocity, our initial rollercoaster whoops devolving into juddered whimpers. “Will it hurt if we fall in?” quavered Lilja, who didn’t have to wait long for the mighty salted spank that provided a flank-reddening answer.

As our pilot hauled us spluttering from the ocean, we watched my wife flying backwards off the rival inflatable that she was sharing with our youngest. “Lady Prudence Jellicoe in mid-air,” I coughed weakly as she surfaced beside us. Somehow these experiences proved a turning point. Shared pain and wholesale briny panic: nothing unites a family like maritime disaster.

The day after began with the peaks fuzzed out by low cloud, luring us into town. You can see why the Brits still flock to Funchal. The hills are steep, but the taxis are cheap, and Madeirans, like their climate, are temperate: the service is efficient and enacted without the cheek-pinching, hair-ruffling histrionics that have more than once obliged my blonde seven-year-old to seek refuge under Mediterranean tables.

A vertiginous new cable car (try to express your relief diplomatically when you spot umlauts on the manufacturer’s nameplate) lifted us above the tightly packed terracotta pantiles and up to Monte Palace, whose extensive and delightful oriental gardens just managed to outshine the 4ha (10 acre) realm of semi-tropical joie-de-vivre that surrounds Reid’s.

The newly quiescent children were politely impressed. Rather more obviously stimulating was the trip back, a lunatic plummet down the twisting tarmac in baskets casually piloted by two stubbled, straw-hatted locals.

Having lowered the hotel’s tone by a full octave in that difficult first day, by the last our children had learnt to sing sotto voce from the Reid’s hymnsheet. No mini McEnroes at our family tennis sessions, no little fishwives by the sea pool. They allowed us a night out, being fed and babysat by a hardy kids’ club volunteer, with whom they bonded so tightly that they spent the next morning in her infant realm, splashing happily about with the toddlers in its knee-deep pool.

On our final afternoon came the ultimate test: tea on the grandly panoramic terrace, a reverential celebration of scones, bone china and tinkling silence. They passed with flying colours. And just the one flying saucer.

Tim Moore’s latest book, Spanish Steps (Vintage, £7.99), is an account of his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with a reluctant donkey named Shinto.

Need to know

Getting there: Tim Moore and family travelled with Orient-Express Hotels (020-7960 0500, www.reidspalace.com) and TAP Air Portugal (0845 6010932, www.flytap.com). Until April 16 a return flight (adult and child) from London to Funchal costs £170. After that, the price is £160 until July 14.

Where to stay: A five-day B&B break at Reid’s Palace for two adults and three children in adjoining junior suites costs from £3,650.