At home in Marsaxlokk

I'm settled into my flat in Triq Sant Antnin, Marsaxlokk with my own saint on the corner of the street.  Marsaxlokk is a fishing village on the Southeast quarter of Malta.  Marsa means harbour in Malti (the semitic-based language of Malta) and xlokk is one of the prevailing winds from the southeast that buffet the rocky cliffs of the islands at particular times of the year.  This part of Malta has been largely spared the tourist over-development that has happened in the North probably because there are several industrial sites located on prominent headlands down here.  But the harbour is crowded with local fishing boats, frigatinas and luzzus, and there is a great produce market here on Sunday mornings when locals and tourists alike flock to the front to buy fish and fresh vegetables.

Carol and I arrived here a week ago on Sunday, sailing into Grand Harbour, Valletta, on the ferry from Pozzallo in Sicily.  I will write about our trip down through Italy in another post.  The taxi driver from the port had difficulty finding the flat on the one-way system in use in the back streets of Marsaxlokk, and navigating through the crowds at the market was tricky!  But we ended up on the doorstep and settled down to wait for the landlord to turn up with the key.  I really appreciated having Carol with me for those first three days to help me work out the details of everyday living that enabled me to feel at home in my second floor flat.  

We also found some time in those three days to do some tourist things including taking the local bus to Valletta and finding pastizzi in a small street shop down the end of the main street and visiting the church of St Paul shipwrecked.  While Carol used an internet cafe to send an email about the next part of her journey, I walked across the street and found myself joining an organisation called Malta Heritage.  My membership entitles me to reduced access to Malta's numerous neolithic temples and ancient sites so I'll be able to explore at leisure in the months ahead.

On Tuesday, we took the open top tourist bus that now operates in Malta.  We chose the Northern route, picking up the tour in Valletta.  The tour allowed us to get on and off at the stops we were particularly interested in and we dropped off for an hour at San Anton gardens and then for a few hours at Mdina.  At San Anton I remembered going there as a fist year High school student to try our hand at life drawing and found the statue that I actually sketched!

Mdina I love!  It is called the silent city because cars are not allowed inside the ancient gates.  We strolled around the flag stoned streets of the walled city and had lunch in a rooftop cafe looking out on the dry stone walls of the surrounding farmland to the coast from Mellieha bay in the North to Valletta in the South.  After Mdina, the bus took us down through winding back roads and through the valley between Ghan Tuffieha bay and St Paul's bay - a very new experience for me on the top of a double decker bus!  

The coast road through Paceville and then Sliema I found distressing because there has been so much development.  We lived in that area in my childhood and many of the sites that hold memories for me have been built over or changed dramatically so it was difficult to pick out the spots around St George's bay where I learnt to swim and dive off the rocks.

I am writing this post from the boardroom of the Marsaxlokk local council offices where there is free wi-fi.  I have organised to have internet access put into my flat but it will take a few days so I have been bringing my laptop down here.  I have sketched out a plan of all the parts of my journey so far that I still need to write about and I will start to do that as soon as I get connected at home.  In the meantime, I have exploring to do using the second hand bike that I bought in the neighbouring town of Birzebbuga.

Ring o' Kerry

So I'm up to date with photos but there are still large chunks of the past month or so that are fast disappearing into the grey areas of my brain.  Today, I'll get started on the Ireland leg of my travels.

Carol and I set off on the train from Gloucester to Fishguard in Wales several weeks ago.  I'd booked the ferry from Fishguard to Rosslare in Ireland several months before on-line, but we discovered when we went to book the train that internet bookings did not take account of connection to the train - it was cheaper to book train and ferry trip than it was just to book the train!  This was to lead to several weeks of half-hearted email and telephone effort on my part to point out how the virtual booking system did not take account of the realities of train timetables. In effect, I ended up paying for 5 cross channel passages rather than 2!  But the train trip along the southern coast of Wales was great. 

The ferry crossing was also great fun - very calm and no rain!  The ferries are really set up for comfort with every facility you could wish for on board.  At one stage we had a Welsh male voice choir spontaneously bursting into song behind us at the bar whilst we watched the Olympics on a huge screen in front of us.  The choir started singing 'Delilah' as the women's hockey, China v. Netherlands, got underway.

We stayed overnight in Wexford where I heard for the first time in a rather old audio-visual presentation at the monastery about Ireland's history of invasion and about the 1798 democratic rebellion.  From there, we travelled on by bus to Waterford and then Cork before finding our first B & B in Killarney to start the Ring of Kerry walk.  I'll post a picture with this now and will edit later with more detail of the walk.

Catching my breath

I'm back at my brother's place in Gloucester nursing a shocking cold and trying to catch up with my blog and other aspects of my life which seems to have collided in a big heap!  It's Sunday morning and my niece Grace, who has just gone back to school, is also sitting with me at the kitchen table watching CBBC.  It is quite late and may be getting on to lunchtime but we seem to be into sloth for the morning at least.

I arrived here on Thursday evening after a nightmare trip down from visiting my older brother, Jim, who lives on an old fishing boat called Lothian Queen in a marina in Ardrossan in Scotland.  I travelled down on the train but the track was washed out between Lancaster and Preston because of heavy rain and we had to wait for buses to transfer us between trains stuck on either side.  My cold was beginning to take hold so I decided not to call in to visit my friend Celia in Cheshire as I didn't want to spread the germs around so I walked in to my brother's kitchen after dark as they were starting to encourage Grace to go to bed.  Since then my cold has matured whilst I have tried to keep up with Gloucester activities like going to the great folk museum where Grace made a paper doll with fold on clothes and I learnt traditional basket weaving.  

This week I plan to gather all my scattered thoughts and possessions in preparation for meeting up with Carole again at Heathrow airport to fly to Rome and make our way by train down through Italy to Sicily and then get the ferry over to Malta where I have already organised the rental of my flat in Marsaxlokk for six months.  I am looking forward to settling for a longer period and will arrange internet access at the flat so I can keep in touch.  In the meantime, I will update my blog with photos and news of my travels so far on the posts I've made up until now so if you're looking in, check up some of the back posts over the next few days as I try and get up to date.