Walking across Malta

On Saturday, I went up to Valletta to join Malta Geographical's bus trip to the North of the Island.  The plan was to do a through walk from Golden Sands on the Northwest cliffs to Xemxija on the Northeast, St Paul's Bay.  It was a superb day for walking and the photo that heads the post was taken from the cliffs near the start of the walk.

The bus dropped us off near the new Golden Sands hotel and we walked up to the cliffs with the hotel on our left.  A circuit of the cliff garigue brought us back to a country road heading towards the east.  This whole section of stunning wild habitat has recently been saved from a threatened golf course and is now national park.  The rocky, hard limestone cliff top edge is an important habitat in Malta and at this time of year it is covered in small, green plants.  I'll use the many photos I took throughout the walk in later posts.

We walked past the unusually modern church at Manikata and I learnt that it had been built around 1960s.  My parents were living at that time in Xemxija and I think I can remember spotting an interesting new building that I thought was a house when we were driving up through the valley to Ghan Tuffieha.  From that road it would look very remote, perched high on the hillside and now it is surrounded by housing.

As we were walking along the valley ridge with fertile fields down through the valley and the ex-British army buildings of Halfar below, we stopped for a break at some old cave homes that were used by the farmers who worked these fields.  The descendants of the people who have been working the fields for centuries formed a co-operative in response to the golf-course threat that would have engulfed this historic site as well as the garigue above.  They have now bought the site off the government and are restoring the old cave village.   I will make myself a note to do another post later on Maltese cave dwellings and include some of the great photos I took.

For some distance on the walk, we followed some of the ancient cart ruts that criss-cross the Northern cliffs of Malta.  These took us past some carved surface holes in the hard stone surface which some people on the walk thought were ancient burial holes but I think I have seen these at the Xaghra circle site on Gozo and there is still speculation about their purpose. 

Coming down towards Xemxija, we had lovely views down through the valley to St Paul's bay. We walked past another abandoned cave house with bougainvillea planted by the side of the entrance, past an old chapel with a story about the monk who lived the life of a hermit there, past a statue of Mary on a rocky slope, through a forest of holm oaks and finally past the nature reserve at Xemxija where flocks of birds were coming in to roost for the night.

The bus was there to meet us and I filled out my form to join Malta Geographical on our way back to Valletta!