Category Archives: Places

Countryside walks in Malta

Dingli, Fawwara, Wied iż-Żurrieq Walk

Map:	Dingli, Fawwara, Wied iż-Żurrieq Walk
Distance:	11.2km / 7miles
Difficulty:	(moderate – long but mostly downhill)
What we liked:	Great scenery of the Dingli cliffs, includes the mysterious ‘Cart Ruts’ of Malta and Gozo, goes past the temples of Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, and it’s downhill

Dingli – Fawwara – Wied iż-Żurrieq map. Source: Malta Tourism Authority

Looking south over the cultivated fields of Fawwara, from a Bronze Age village site that juts out almost to the sea

Looking south over the cliffs near Fawwara

Inside the first chamber of the South Temple of the Mnajdra temple complex

This was the first walk we did on Malta, and gives a great taste of the megalithic history of the islands as it includes the mysterious ‘Cart Ruts‘ near the start, and ends near the megalithic temples of Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra. We liked that it was largely downhill, and there’s a good variety of sights too. One thing though – bring a packed lunch with you as the route is fairly remote, though there are cafes and restaurants at the end in Wied iż-Żurrieq.

Watchtowers Walk

Map:	Watchtowers Walk
Distance:	14.45km / 9miles
Difficulty:	(hard – long with some uphill sections)
What we liked:	Good variety of sights – watchtowers, beaches, holiday bays, local bird traps and the odd church, and having a beer and a packet of crisps on the Għadira beach at the end!

Watchtowers Walk map. Source: Malta Tourism Authority

The aptly named Paradise Bay is on the route – don’t forget your swimming costume!

St Agatha’s Tower – otherwise known as the Red Tower, dominates the northern peninsula of Malta and is the final stop of the walk

This walk circumnavigates the very northern outcrop of Malta, and it took us over an hour to get there by bus from Valletta where we were greeted by an uphill hike! As we were off-season a lot of the little holiday bays and lovely secluded beaches were very quiet though I suspect it’d be very different in the summer. Still, this walk includes a nice variety of sights and the highlight of the Red Tower is saved for the end.

Windmills Walk

Map:	Windmills Walk
Distance:	8.8km / 5.5miles
Difficulty:	(easy)
What we liked:	Spotting the windmills, reading the information boards at the Tal-Ġibjun Garden viewpoint about ⅓rd of the way around

Windmills Walk map. Source: Malta Tourism Authority

The view across Malta from the Tal-Gibjun Garden viewpoint is worth the visit to Żurrieq even if you don't do the walk!

The view across Malta from the Tal-Ġibjun Garden viewpoint is worth the visit to Żurrieq even if you don’t do the walk!

.. but then you’d miss out on the milling history of the island!

First, a confession – we skipped out the Bakkari Remains and stayed in Żurrieq because we’d spent so much time at the excellent Tal-Ġibjun Garden viewpoint reading about the sights, events and identifying the landmarks from this natural vantage point. Of all the windmills, only one is still active, and it sits atop some old burial pits! This is quite a compact walk so we twinned it with a stop at the Blue Grotto to make a day of it.

Girgenti Walk

Map:	Girgenti Walk
Distance:	7.7km / 4.8miles
Difficulty:	(moderate – some uneven ground and an easy scramble to visit the Big Cave)
What we liked:	The amazing start – the complicated collection of ‘Cart Ruts’ nicknamed Clapham Junction (yes, seriously!) and the aptly named ‘Big Cave’

Girgenti Walk map. Source: Malta Tourism Authority

A small section of the ‘Cart Ruts’ at the so-called ‘Clapham Junction’ – what were they used for?

View from inside part of Ghar il-Kbir which literally translates to ‘Big Cave’. It’s a cave. And, you guessed it, it’s big

The huge bronze Laferla Cross next to the Assumption Church sits on the edge of the hill with lovely views over the second half of the walk

This is our favourite of the walks we’ve done on Malta because the detour to the field of ‘Cart Ruts’ just points you at the right place but leaves you to find them. It was really enjoyable trying to actually find the famous ‘Clapham Junction’ and then further up the same field are burial pits and the ‘Big Cave’ that was inhabitanted until 1835. Other highlights for us were the huge bronze Laferla Cross (which we saw from the viewpoint of the previous Windmills walk), the figures surrounding the dome of the Providence Church, and serendipitously visiting on the annual St Nicholas Parish church open day, where they opened up the roof and the organ pit. We got great views from the top of the church, and befriended a local guy who showed us the belfry and invited us to the village festival at the end of July next year!

Maqluba Walk

Map:	Maqluba Walk
Distance:	6km / 3.7miles
Difficulty:	(easy)
What we liked:	The small chapels that bestrew the countryside, getting out into the farming fields of the island

Maqluba Walk map. Source: Malta Tourism Authority

The start of the walk is Siggiewi Parish Church. When we tried to enter we were told that the entrance was through the belfry! For a small mandatory donation we got to climb onto the roof and on the way down we were given an introduction to the church's organ!

The start of the walk is Siġġiewi Parish church. When we tried to enter we were told that the entrance was through the belfry! For a small mandatory donation we got to climb onto the roof and on the way down we were given an introduction to the Church’s organ!

Aerial photo of the giant sinkhole that appeared on the 23rd of November 1343 during a severe winter storm

Aerial photo of the giant sinkhole that appeared on the 23rd of November 1343 near Qrendi during a severe winter storm. Photo source: onsite information board

And we end with yet another church – this time Qrendi’s St Matthew’s Chapel as the sun sets

As this walk starts at the end of the previous Girgenti Walk, we did them both in the same day, stopping in Siġġiewi for a spot of lunch between them. This is very much a rural Maltese countryside walk far from any tourist attractions, but our timing was impeccable as the lovely little Hal-Xluq Church was home to a local artists’ exhibition – which is the only other time of the year the church opens its doors besides the village festivities! The other highlight for us was the giant sinkhole in the Maqluba valley that appeared in 1343, just outside Qrendi, and almost took the then smaller chapel of St. Matthew with it!

Maltese Architecture

Building materials

There aren’t any forests on Malta and wood is in short supply so there isn’t any traditional wooden architecture such as we’ve seen in Latvia, Russia and Japan. Fortunately for the Maltese much of the island is composed of a soft limestone which is easy to quarry and is used to build everything from dry stone walls and houses to churches and fortifications. Its soft honey colour is very easy on the eye and gives a uniform, cohesive look to any town viewed from a distance.

Valleta’s limestone architecture seen from across the Grand Harbour

There isn’t much in the way of modern architecture here (outside the resort areas anyway), and certainly no skyscrapers, but at the entrance to Valletta a new Parliament building is nearing completion. Designed by the high profile architect Renzo Piano (one of his other recent projects is The Shard in London) it has caused controversy and apparently UNESCO are considering whether Valletta’s World Heritage status should be revoked because of it. I hope it doesn’t come to that, it is definitely modern but use of the traditional limestone means that it blends in nicely. We like it. We also like that it’s been nicknamed the ‘Cheese Grater’.

The ‘Cheese Grater’, Malta’s new parliament building

Fortifications

It’s not only the buildings here that are built from the local limestone but also the island’s many fortifications – city walls, coastal watchtowers and forts. In the rather clunkily named but nevertheless fascinating Fortifications Interpretation Centre we learnt that military engineers would dig out the limestone to create a defensive ditch surrounding the city and use the blocks to build up the walls.

Fortifications at the land-side of Senglea, one of the Three Cities

Balconies

One of the most obvious features of Maltese houses are the balconies. They’re usually wooden, closed in and painted in bright colours. Although it’s not clear exactly what their origins are, it’s thought that they were influenced by the Arabic muxarabija balconies, possibly arriving via Spain. They gained popularity in the 18th century and were sometimes added to the house later. Because of the high price of timber they became something of a status symbol amongst the country’s elite, however when the British took over in the 19th century timber became more affordable making balconies available to those of lower means.

Balconies along Republic Street in Valletta

Front doors

The Maltese do an interesting line in what we might call door furniture. There are extravagant door knockers, plaques of saints next to front doors and, as every house has its own name, a wide variety of name plaques in different designs and styles. It’s been fun to spot different ones as we walk the streets.

Shops

Of course there are shopping malls with the usual chain stores, but many of the shopfronts in Malta’s towns seem to hark back to an earlier time with small windows and hand-painted signs making them look a bit retro. They also have old fashioned opening times with pretty much all small businesses closing for lunch at 12pm and (perhaps) reopening at 4pm for 2-3 hours. Maybe this makes more sense in August when the midday temperature averages 32°C but in late autumn there doesn’t appear to be a clear explanation and at first it was confusing to us.

Valletta shopfront

Religious bits and bobs

Malta is predominantly Catholic (over 90%) and, as well as the saint plaques beside front doors, there are frequent roadside shrines and street corner niches containing saints, plus lots of churches. The larger churches often follow a similar design with two bell towers flanking the entrance and a dome over the nave.

St Lawrence Church in Vittoriosa

Two street corner niches and a roadside shrine

British influence

Malta was a British colony for 164 years until it gained its independence in 1964. There are a few telltale signs that make us feel a bit nostalgic and homesick, most obviously the red postboxes and phone booths.

Red phone booths are rare in the UK now, but everywhere in Malta

Segueing around Gozo, on a Segway!

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The country of Malta is a Mediterranean archipelago, and only the 3 largest islands are inhabited. The main one is Malta, then Gozo to the north, and between them is a small island called Comino which only has 4 permanent residents.

Given their proximity, Gozo shares a lot of the same history as Malta, and in looking for places to visit and things to do for a couple of days there we found GozoSegway – a small company that operates guided tours of Gozo while you operate a Segway!

Us on Segways having just passed our Compulsory Basic Training, which consists of an emergency stop, hill start and smiling from ear to ear

A Segway is a two-wheeled form of personal transportation, similar to a motorised skateboard, but way smarter – using gyroscopes developed by BAE Systems and a lot of very clever electronics it uses your centre of gravity to control motion and direction. Like us, you may have seen them in movies or in the odd city centre, and riding on one is something I’ve wanted to try since they came out in 2001.

We weren’t sure how easy it was going to be to learn how to ride, and as we wanted to see quite a bit of Gozo we booked their longest 2½ hour tour of north-western coastline.

Kevin (the Boss) and Peter (our Guide) met us in Marsalforn with their truck-full of Segways and after a short explanation we were up and whizzing around the car park like a pair of two-wheeled tearaways, grinning from ear to ear!

Getting acquainted: Peter our guide makes sure he’s packed everything we need for the trip; My Segway and I getting to know each other as we whizz up and down the car park of Marsalforn Bay harbour

Our initial concerns about how difficult we’d find them to ride were completely unfounded – basically, if you can stand upright then you’ll have no problems whatsoever controlling a Segway! We could call it an amazing technical achievement, or we could just simply say its magic how they actively maintain balance, and with the slightest shift in weight forward or backward it starts moving exactly how you would expect it to. Very quickly we understood why Peter said that the Segway becomes an extension of the body.

After the Segway driving test equivalent of emergency stops and hill starts, Peter led the way along the coastline towards our first stop – the salt pans of Gozo.

The Gozo Salt Pans, still in use after more than 2000 years

Dating to the time of the Romans (264BC to 395AD), the salt pans have been in use for thousands of years. The closest ones to Marsalforn are irregular and organic in shape as they’re the oldest and were carved out with simple hand tools; further along the pattern of salt pans becomes regular, ordered and each pan is bigger as better tooling and machinery improved not only their creation but the harvesting of the salt.

The evolution of man and tools is evident in the shape of the salt pans. Left: the oldest salt pans were created with crude hand tools; right: modern tools allow larger and more regular salt pans

Wied il-Ghasri, a deep valley used by pirates and smugglers of the Mediterranean, so much so that they built a shaft into the side of the cliff to lower supplies and raise booty!

Wied il-Għasri, a deep valley used by pirates and smugglers of the Mediterranean, so much so that they built a shaft into the side of the cliff to lower supplies and raise booty!

Peter stopped to prepare a prickly pear. Gozo, like Malta, gets a lot of sunshine and the prickly pear, like all the fruit here was very sweet. The thick, heavy leaves of the cactus make a great chopping board too

We stopped for a coffee and biscuits a little further along the cliff tops, where we watched a guy raising fishing baskets

The naturally formed window at the end of Wied il-Mielah, just a little further west along the northern coastline of Gozo

The naturally formed window at the end of Wied il-Mielaħ, just a little further west along the northern coastline of Gozo

Next we headed inland and after a quick glide through the small town of Gharb (in Maltese, ‘gh’ is silent, as you might remember we learned in Mdina & Rabat), and we were back out on the open road towards the dominating Basilica of the Blessed Virgin of Ta’ Pinu.

Famous as a place of pilgrimage for those seeking answers to prayers for miraculous recoveries, the The Basilica of the Blessed Virgin of Ta’ Pinu has an extended chapel where letters and artefacts of prayer and gratitude from around the world are on display

The Basilica of the Blessed Virgin of Ta’ Pinu. The story goes that in 1833 a spinster by the name of Karmina Grima was walking past the then dilapidated chapel on the site and heard a voice asking her to recite 3 Hail Marys’, she did and shortly afterwards her neighbour’s mother was miraculously healed. As word spread many started pilgrimages to ask for temporal and spiritual favours and the church was rebuilt in 1932 to accommodate both the visitors and their ex-voto.

The basilica is also known for a painting of the Virgin Mary which depicts her hands in prayer though one hand is white and the other is black. It’s not clear if it was the artist’s intent to show her black hand in shadow, or, as some have suggested, a sign of the multi-ethnicity of Christianity.

From here we took a long and winding road back down to Marsalforn and while we waited for Kevin to return with the truck, we chatted with Peter over a coffee about travelling – he’s from Prague in the Czech Republic – how he ended up living on Gozo and, of course, Segways!

Segways – easily the most enjoyable way to climb the hills of Gozo!

We really enjoyed the experience, the Segways are great fun and a fantastic way to see this hilly little island.

Mdina & Rabat, Malta

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Mdina is the ancient capital of Malta, it’s believed that there has been a settlement here for over 2000 years and it easily predates the Knights of St John who landed in 1530 and promptly moved the capital to Vittoriosa, and then to Valletta in 1571. Centrally located atop a hill it looks very much like you would expect an impregnable fortress to look with thick stone walls and a deep moat, although nowadays the moat is a green park.

The city is entered through the impressive Mdina Gate

The defensive walls evolved over hundreds of years under different ruling groups. The final changes were made during the Arab occupation of AD870-1250 and the name derives from the Arabic word for city, ‘medina’. To call it a city is perhaps a little misleading, I was surprised by how tiny the area inside the walls is. The narrow streets seem almost labyrinthine but it’s difficult to get lost as before long you inevitably end up at an outer wall or the central street. Still it’s very picturesque and we enjoyed doing a little exploring.

A typical Mdina street

Clockwise from left: there are several churches, convents and monasteries inside the walls along with numerous statues of saints on street corners; nearly every house has a small icon by the door, a feature common across the island; Mdina street sign; at night the streets are lit by lanterns

From the north-eastern walls you can see all the way to the coast and to Valletta, and I’m sure that the corner towers command views over pretty much the whole island which I suppose was the idea for defensive purposes.

View to the Mediterranean Sea from Mdina’s walls

The Bishop of Malta’s palace is situated within Mdina and his seat is the Cathedral here. It’s nowhere near as impressive as St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta but in its own way it’s quite pretty and much more peaceful than that busier church.

Mdina Cathedral makes up one side of St Paul’s Square

Cathedral interior (clockwise from top left): frescoes on the walls and ceiling; the cathedral has some beautiful stained glass windows; the floor consists of inlaid marble gravestones; I really liked the paintings inside the dome

Just outside Mdina’s walls is the town of Rabat, also named from the Arabic it means suburbs. There are a few museums here too, we chose to visit the complex beside and underneath St Paul’s Church – St Paul’s Grotto, World War II Shelters, Catacombs and the Wignacourt Museum which are all on one combined ticket. Like many churches on the island, this one is dedicated to St Paul who was shipwrecked on Malta for three months on his way to Rome in AD60. The first stop downstairs from the ticket desk, and directly underneath the church, is the grotto where St Paul is said to have lived and preached during his time here, nowadays it’s a chapel.

Andrew in St Paul’s Grotto

Deeper underground is the entrance to the bomb shelters which were built for the town’s inhabitants during WWII. They seemed to go on forever, there are fifty small rooms directly off the main corridors. However they are now all empty apart from a few floor tiles and there wasn’t much in the way of explanatory notices so we had to use our imaginations to guess what it might have been like to shelter down there. It’s safe to say that the residents spent a lot of time down here as there were 3340 air raid alerts between 1940-44 and during the peak months in the first half of 1942 there were an average of eight or nine alerts every day!

Me in the corridor of the World War II bomb shelters underneath St Paul’s Church

Leading off from the bomb shelters are two sections of catacombs. These pre-date the church and are part of what would have been a large cemetery complex going back to Roman times when it was forbidden to have burials inside the city walls. They are also, thankfully, empty. The structure was quite distinct from the bomb shelters, we found them pretty cramped with narrow, twisting passages.

St Paul’s Catacombs

We ended our visit with a quick look around the Wignacourt Museum. It’s pretty modern and nicely set up but the contents consisted mostly of old oil paintings and local religious memorabilia which weren’t of much interest to us. The highlight was a 1937 Austin Six Limousine in mint condition which used to belong to the Bishop of Malta. It seemed to have been assembled in the exhibition room as it was too big to fit through either the door or the window.

Austin Six Limousine in the Wignacourt Museum

Next door to the museum is a bakery and it would have been rude not to buy a traditional Maltese cake. We chose one that in English is called “honey ring”, it’s a pastry case filled not with honey but a spicy black treacle mixture which tasted like a very dense gingerbread. We asked the girl in the shop how to say its name in Maltese, “Qaghaq tal-ghasel”, she explained that the ‘gh’ is silent, but didn’t look too impressed by our pronunciation efforts… Oh well, it tasted good however you say it.

Our Qaghaq tal-ghasel

Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, Malta

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The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum feels like a bit of an exclusive place to visit. Only ten people an hour are admitted, you need to book in advance and tickets are pricy at €30 (£24) each. Frankly, we wondered whether it would be worth it, but we needn’t have worried as it was fascinating. So, first things first, what is a hypogeum? Pretty simple really, it’s a fancy word for an underground burial chamber. In this case the structure is hewn from the solid limestone rock which makes up much of Malta’s geology.

Hal Saflieni Hypogeum – it doesn’t look like much from the outside

As instructed, we arrived 15 minutes before our tour time whereupon I got a bit of a fright as the man on the desk looked at my booking confirmation and said “11am, yes, that’s for tomorrow!” Of course I’d checked it multiple times before and was just about to argue when I saw that he was pulling my leg. Of course, Andrew thought this was hilarious…

As the group gathered at the entrance, our bags and cameras were put into a locker and each person was given an audio guide. First we were ushered into a small exhibition room and then shown a short film about the history of the hypogeum. It was built between 3600BC and 2400BC and consists of three levels. The level closest to the surface is the oldest and sustained some damage when the hypogeum was rediscovered in 1902 by a stonemason laying foundations for new houses.

Looking down at the top level of the Hypogeum [photo credit: Heritage Malta]

As we descended through the top level, the audio guide explained that the builders who rediscovered the structure didn’t report it right away which meant that quite a bit of damage occurred here and anything that might have survived of surface features was completely lost. Unfortunately the first man to oversee the excavations then died unexpectedly while out of the country and his four years of dig notes have never been found.

The main chamber on the middle level of the Hypogeum [photo credit: Heritage Malta]

It was interesting to see how the chambers had been carved out from the stone often using natural fault lines to dictate where walls would be. The finish in some of the chambers imitates the look of above ground temples built in Malta at the same time, like the ones we visited at Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. At the farthest extent of the tour walkway was the chamber which archaeologists have called the Holy of Holies where this is most apparent. Indeed the corbelled design of the carved roof can clearly be seen here and added weight to theory that the above ground temples had roofs constructed using this method.

Holy of Holies [photo credit: Heritage Malta]

Also in the middle level, in the Oracle Chamber, some of the roof paintings have survived. Unfortunately the symbolism of the swirling pattern hasn’t come down to us, but archaeologists speculate that the red ochre colour used was because of its similarity to blood and may represent life. In the same room, the audioguide brought our attention to doorways raised above the level of the floor and explained that when the Hypogeum was in use this was likely because the floor would have been several centimetres deep in a mix of soil and skeletal remains – a slightly gruesome thought.

Roof paintings in the Oracle Chamber [photo credit: Heritage Malta]

As well as the structure itself, archaeologists unearthed human bone fragments as well as a number of other artefacts, including personal ornaments and various types of figurines. It is thought that around 7000 people were buried there over the course of 1000 years which didn’t sound like many to me (only seven per year) but no other explanation was given so perhaps it isn’t so remarkable. The most famous of the statues found here is the ‘Sleeping Lady’ which we later saw in the Museum of Archaeology in Valletta.

The ‘Sleeping Lady’ was much smaller than we expected, only about 10cm from head to toe

Afterwards it was very clear to us why there are all the restrictions on entry – only ten people per tour, no bags or photos inside, etc. Quite apart from the conservation concerns (erosion from increased carbon dioxide levels from more people, photography flashes damaging wall paintings), the place is pretty small and even with a group of ten there was a certain amount of shuffling around at each stage so that everyone got a look at the interesting elements in each chamber, and photography would have slowed the tour down even more.

It is humbling to think about the people who constructed the Hypogeum 5000 years ago. They wouldn’t have had metal tools, just flints and bone and would have been shrouded in darkness – obviously no electric lights in those days and no soot marks have been found so no fixed torches either. The audio guide really added to the experience too, it was well put together with atmospheric background music composed for it by Renzo Spiteri and actually recorded inside the Hypogeum. The vision and dedication which must have been passed down from generation to generation in its building is mind blowing.

two year trip

Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures