The subtropical island of Madeira, sometimes called the Pearl of the Atlantic, has long held sway over the unhealthy and the elderly British. The Anglo roots on this Portuguese island are long-standing, thanks to a royal marriage in the 16th century.

But a more compelling reason for Madeira's appeal for the pale and the not-necessarily-hale is year-round springlike weather. Consider the photographs on display at the island's grande-dame hotel, Reid's Palace -- a pageant of older Brits taking great pains to unwind. Here is a white-bearded George Bernard Shaw in 1924, getting a tango lesson on the hotel's manicured lawn; here is Winston Churchill, painting watercolors seaside when he came to Madeira in 1950 to try to overcome his "black dog" depression. Note Churchill's tweed suit, bow tie and cigar.

And so, it seems, it has always been. But, what's this? A bit of pink amid the white. It's the young. Younger travelers are increasingly drawn to this 35- by 14-mile volcanic island, where new boutique hotels, roads and nightlife are a beguiling addition to Madeira's age-old prime asset: spectacular scenery in the form of dramatic sea cliffs and hundreds of miles of levadas, or irrigation channels, that make for terrific hiking.

Unbowed by the February floods on the island that claimed 42 lives, but whose ravages have been addressed with admirable efficacy and speed, this new generation of travelers and revelers, though not immune to the charms of the disco beat, is marked by a sense of adventure and an interest in nature. Madeira, they are quick to point out, is not Ibiza.

Encounters with an ancient forest

During my visit to the island, less than two hours from Lisbon by plane, I stayed at the Estalagem da Ponta do Sol, a hip aerie 25 minutes outside the island's capital, Funchal. Perched on top of one of the island's sea cliffs, the 54-room hotel is accessed by means of an outdoor elevator that leads to a suspended catwalk. After touring the hotel's immaculate grounds and minimalist buildings, I repeatedly availed myself of the hotel's infinity pool and nearby honesty bar; I was honest about gin and orange juice, but slightly less honest about an almond-covered ice cream bar.

I struck out the next day on an Estalagem-organized levada walk in a nearby village called Boa Morte. It took only an hour on the trail running alongside the 2-foot-deep irrigation channel through the hills to apprehend the levadas' charm: They gently wind through various microclimates so that you feel as though your slide projector has jumbled together pictures from several vacations. You find yourself, by turns, amid a rain-forest-like scrum of ferns, a hushed meeting of pines, a spray of birds of paradise, a bougainvillea-dappled high meadow. It's said that Madeira is the only place in the world with ancient forest dating back to before the Ice Age; jacaranda trees and fuchsia are common on the island.

That afternoon and evening, I decided to address Madeira's two touristic shortcomings: a dearth of cultural treasures and no natural beaches. On the former front, I drove 15 minutes from the hotel to the new art museum, Casa das Mudas, in the town of Calheta. A huge, bunkerlike series of galleries built into a cliff, the Casa was offering a Man Ray retrospective that had been shown in Paris, New York and the Hague. Wandering through the cavernous, unpeopled galleries, I was equally interested in the Man Ray works and the museum's windows overlooking the sea.

Back near my hotel, in the charming village of Ponta do Sol, I walked across the rock beach -- it appeared to be the world's most haphazardly curated collection of vulcanized dinosaur eggs -- to the water. Finding a small patch of rough black sand, I disrobed down to my skivvies and edged into the water. Balmy. Delightful. But slightly rocky. So I got out of the water and eased myself over to a sheer cliff wall, off of which poured a 40-foot waterfall.

Exhaustive list of nightlife options

I told the chic Madeiran in his 30s who was sitting behind the reception desk of the Estalagem that I was in search of a nighttime hot spot, and had read that Cafe do Teatro in the capital might fit the bill. Apparently I was misinformed. "You might look in, just to get a feeling," he advised me, his eyes twinkling with "I know something better." Pointing out that it was Good Friday, he added, "And it wouldn't be strong tonight, especially. We are a very Catholic country, and Jesus died."

He then proceeded to write down an itinerary of ideal club-going for me: I was to start at a restaurant and bar called Chega de Saudade ("From, say, 12:30 to 1:30 [a.m.] is nice. Only locals know it. It's very cool"). Then Mini Eco Bar from 1:30 to 2:30, Cafe do Teatro from 2:30 to 3:30, the Copacabana disco at the Oscar Niemeyer-designed casino from 3:30 to 4, and then, from 4 until, yes, 8 a.m., the combined, hangar-like space that contains the clubs Marginal ("This is the hippest place. Electronic music. It's wicked"), Jam ("Oldies") and Vespas ("If you have the will for it"). Exhausted, I thanked him, and went to my room for a long nap.

It was but one example of Madeira's appeal to a younger audience. Paragliding? Surfing? Bungee-jumping? Marlin fishing, mountain biking, levada bodysurfing? All of these activities were available to me.

Instead, I took, as many tourists do, a tour of the Old Blandy Wine Lodge. Here I learned all about the island's namesake beverage, the fortified wine with which our Founding Fathers toasted the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The half-hour tour wound through storage areas and a memorabilia room, and ended in the tasting room. When one of my tasting room tablemates -- an older gentleman from California who was a die-hard Madeira enthusiast -- asked me if I shared his passion, I confessed, "I mostly cook with it." He looked at me disapprovingly.

I had better luck socially on my dolphin-watching trip that afternoon. Some 30 of us boarded a small boat that took us about 20 minutes offshore, where we had several charmed sightings of dolphins, both bottlenose and common. I loved talking with our highly informed onboard biologist -- a bubbly and emphatic young woman named Lisia, who had pink hearts on her sunglasses. When I asked Lisia, "Do you know where off of Madeira the movie 'Moby Dick' was filmed?," she said, "No! I am ashamed! I should know this important fact!" She added: "But I do know he was a sperm whale, which we have in Madeira."

Alas, we didn't see any. But being on a boat did give me some perspective on Madeira's dramatic topography. When João Gonçalves Zarco first sighted Madeira -- around 1418, during Portugal's Golden Age of Discovery -- he thought he was looking at the mouth of hell. Casting my eye at the coastline, I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. All I could see were the memories of the highly enjoyable trip I'd been on. To me it looked more like heaven.

And was I able, in the end, to motor my 48-year-old personal engine through the nightclub crawl that had been prescribed me back in Ponta do Sol? Reader, I was. I didn't make it to 8 a.m. But, so fired up with the tom-tom beat was I that I made it to 4:30. I felt like a 19-year-old.