Herdie

Fanal Forest is one of the most magical and most fragile corners of Madeira. Ancient laurissilva trees rise out of rolling fog, and a free-roaming herd of cows wanders the plateau. Finding them is part of the magic. Herdy makes that search a little easier, without breaking the spell.

Herdy is a live, community-built heatmap of recent cow sightings in Fanal. When a fellow hiker spots the herd, they can anonymously drop a pin: no account, no login, no personal data required. Everyone nearby sees a soft, blurred glow on the map showing roughly where the herd has been seen recently, fading away automatically after a few hours as the sighting goes stale.

WHY IT'S BUILT THIS WAY

Fanal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site under active conservation management. Herdy is designed around that responsibility:

• No exact GPS pins - only a soft, blurred heatmap, so the app can never be used to pinpoint or crowd a specific animal
• The map only shows the official trail as a walkable path
• No accounts, no tracking: pins are anonymous by design

OFFLINE-READY

Fanal's fog comes with patchy signal. The trail map is bundled into the app so it loads instantly, even with no connection.

Herdy is free, has no ads, and doesn't sell your data. It was built after a foggy, cow-less hike through Fanal, in the hope that the next visitor gets to find the herd instead.

More trails and locations are coming soon.