The exchange rate for cash is 1.20 just about everywhere now in Euroland, ATM 1.23 minus whatever your bank charges.

Balance the risk of having large amounts of cash about your person with the fact you might get 1p less in the £.

Im going to madeira in a couple of weeks and cant decided whether to take cash or travellers cheques. Does anyone know how easy it is to get money changed? Im staying at the pestana casino park but the silly girl at first choice refused to find out if they had money changing facillities at the hotel. All seemed a bit too much trouble for her. I dont want to be trecking miles to change money but at the same time dont want to carry loads of cash with me.

We were in Madeira in January. We always only take a small amount of euros with us, then change when we are abroad as we have found that you normally get a better rate. However we were wrong in Madeira. The hotel we were in didn't exchange, the banks rates for exchange we found to be very poor with high charges. The best place we could find was a Western Union in Funchal. We wished we had changed at home as at the time we could have got a much better rate.

It'a Nationwide flexicard for me as there are plenty of ATM's on the island, the only drawback is that the bank's only allow a withdrawal of 200€ at any one time which I did not find a problem.

Dave

Thanks everyone, looks like i'll just be taking euros then.