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At least eight out of every ten people who I knew had been to Malta hadn’t recommended it. They told how it was dry and barren, there were no good beaches, it was very built up, and it’s baking hot. True, if you go in July or August, it will be baking hot, dry and barren. True, you can barely get a razor blade between the hotels at the resorts. And true, it mostly has a rocky shoreline with only a few, albeit stony, beaches. I think those eight out of ten people were after a beach holiday of the type you get on other Mediterranean islands such as the Balearics or the Greek Islands and, for them, Malta doesn’t match up. Fair enough, I can see their point, but that’s not the type of holiday I was after.
My advice before any trip to Malta would be to read every book or magazine article and watch every documentary about Malta that you can find. Only then will you appreciate just how fascinating this little country is.
And it is little: Measuring only 27km by 14km, find any high point, of which there are few,
and you can see the coast on all sides. Gozo is even littler. The two islands together, along with Comino and a few other outlying rocks, cover only 316km2, making this the eleventh smallest country in the world. For me, that’s reason alone to visit, which is why I’ve visited San Marino and will one day find myself on Nauru.
And it is fascinating: The history of Malta begins way back in megalithic times. I suppose it does everywhere but in Malta you have some remnants of those times. In fact, the megalithic temples on Malta and Gozo are arguably the oldest surviving man-made structures on the planet – predating the Pyramids by a thousand years and about five-hundred years older than Stonehenge.
Over time Malta has passed through the hands of the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Scousers, Aztecs, Nigerians, Simpsons, Elves, seemingly anyone who wanted it.
Then for hundreds of years Malta was, and still is, the home to the Knights of St John, also known as Knights Hospitallers. After almost four-hundred years of killing Muslims and whoever else got in the way in the Holy Land, the Knights
of St John were given Malta in 1530 by the King of Spain. Malta would be theirs forever for the reasonable rent of one Maltese falcon a year. Using their acquired (robbed) riches, they set about jazzing up the little islands with churches, palaces and defensive towers and did a pretty good job.
Despite numerous failed attempts by the Ottomans, mostly due to the awesome defenses knocked up by Grand Master La Valette, who they named the capital after, it was Napoleon who eventually defeated them with hardly a fight in 1798.
Though the French didn’t stay long: The British, who at the time were giving Napoleon’s ships a damn good thrashing, were invited by the Maltese to oust the French and then look after the islands for a while. This they did until independence in 1964 – the first time Malta had self-rule in several thousand years.
It was the alliance with the British that provided Malta with simultaneously its darkest and finest hour during World War Two. The Allied and Axis Powers both recognized the strategic importance of Malta; so close to the fight in North Africa and in
the centre of the Mediterranean shipping lanes. A huge amount of successful naval and air raids were launched against Axis shipping from Malta.
Being only 100km from Sicily, Italian and German planes were able to fly five bombing missions a day – in total 3000 raids were flown, far more than on London during the Blitz and for a longer period.
The Maltese were almost starved into submission until Operation Pedestal final got through - a convoy of fourteen supply ships, of which only three made it, and an escort of forty-four warships. There are some great documentaries of this convoy around with actual footage.
Malta held out and after the war the entire population was awarded the George Cross – Britain’s highest civilian bravery medal. And that is the cross you see on the national flag today.
The islands are very easy to get around due to an excellent bus service. Though we soon realized that the small distances involved and the circuitous routes the buses take mean it’s often quicker to walk; particularly on Gozo.
We initially based ourselves in Sliema
(cheap, ugly, lots of hotel and restaurant options, handy for buses to everywhere) then in Xlendi on Gozo (great, quiet, nice coastline) and finally in Msida (nothing there but can walk into Valletta).
Despite the battering it took, Valletta is a beautiful city. The formidable walls enclose picturesque streets of old tall houses with brightly-coloured balconies. The soft creamy-coloured limestone contrasts really well with the blue Mediterranean surrounding the city on three sides. The Three Cities just over the water are equally as attractive and, while not having the big sights of Valletta, have a grittier, lived-in feel that we really liked.
Other places worth a mention on Malta are the grand old-town of Mdina, fish lunches around the pretty harbour of Marsaxlokk, and great walking along the coast above Dingli Cliffs.
Overall I think we preferred Gozo. This is partly due to unexpectedly being given a really nice apartment that had big south-facing windows and so wasn’t as cold as our other hotels. From our base in Xlendi we spent one day hiking west along the cliffs to the Azure Window and The Inland Sea, and another day hiking east
to the little cove of Mgarr ix-Xini. We generally had the dramatic cliff-tops to ourselves apart from the little songbirds, quick lizards and a fair few black snakes making the most of the sun to warm themselves up after the winter hibernation. Gozo’s main town; Victoria, is also very pretty with views over the whole island from its citadel.
As well as the history, another reason I wanted to visit Malta was the diving. Some claim the profusion of wrecks, underwater caves and canyons, combined with great visibility due to distance from any major rivers, and rich marine life due to a lack of pollution, make Malta the diving hotspot of the whole Mediterranean. I only dived twice but so far I agree with those claims. Fortunately, the only other person diving that day happened to be researching for a travel company who were thinking of starting to run diving holidays to Malta. Consequently, the dive shop was out to impress and we dived two great wrecks. The first, the Um El Faroud, a 110m oil tanker that you could get inside and explore, was made all the more exciting by the huge swell, unnoticeable in the
wreck, but it made getting in and out at the small harbour quite a challenge. The second was just as interesting; the HMS Maori, a destroyer that was bombed in World War Two after helping to sink the Bismarck. Despite the waves, the visibility was excellent, though I must admit, even with gloves, a hood and a 6mm wetsuit, the sixteen degrees water had me shivering after a while underneath.
What we wanted was a fairly relaxing holiday with lots to see and do but without spending lots of time travelling. Malta fit the bill perfectly.
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