ColorGrinder’s Malta Pages

If you want to get off the beaten track in Malta, and are prepared to swap your flip flops for walking shoes, you will experience a side of Malta that most tourists never see. To point you in the right direction, the Malta Tourism Authority have published a great series of countryside walk guides which can be downloaded for FREE from www.visitmalta.com.

One hot Saturday in June 2010 I got off the bus in Ghadira armed with bottled water, cameras, tripod and a printed copy of the Marfa Ridge Walk brochure. It was a very hot day and the German football team were meeting Argentina in the World Cup quarter final later that afternoon so I figured that I would follow the the walk for a couple of hours and then find a bar with a big TV to watch the match.

I left the beach at Ghadira, packed as it always is in the summer with a mix of tourist families, language students and a few brave locals, and walked up onto the northern part of the Marfa ridge. The road is quiet and bordered by scrubby trees. Clumps of wild thyme and straggly fennel bushes are everywhere and give up a delicious fragrance if you crush the leaves or seeds between you fingers. To the right of the road, dusty paths lead to low cliffs and great views of the bay. This HDR shot was taken about halfway down the ridge.

Further down the road, past Malta’s only camp site (update 28/07/10. There is more than one camp site in Malta – see comments), the trees thin out. The Immaculate Conception chapel stands at the  end of the headland.  Close by, rather close to the cliff edge is a statue of Our Lady.

After checking out the chapel I set off towards the white tower and pretty much the most northerly point of mainland Malta. On the way I passed through areas where swathes of jagged agave plants competed for space with the wild thyme bushes. If you are doing the walk with bare legs, give them a wide berth or you will find out just how prickly these plants are.

From the agave bushes I continued down the hill and eventually came to the campsite entrance. I turned right here and walked up the rocks towards a very large radio antennae. Just behind the fenced off area is a large depression where the rocks have fallen in to leave a crater that is open at one end to the sea. Here at Ahrax Point you have excellent views of Comino and Gozo. I sat on the rocks for a while and watched a variety of craft ranging from ferries to jetskis making their up and down the Comino Channel.

By now I was beginning to think of a beer and the football match so I headed back up to the ridge road by way of Little Armier Bay. The Malta Tourist Authority walk continues for a couple more hours on the southern part of the Marfa Ridge. I will save that for my next visit.

 

UPDATE: The Geocache itself has been removed several times by vandals and I am currently thinking about whether I should replace or relocate it. If you still want to do the treasure hunt, all of the clues are still valid and (I think) that it is an intersesting walk. Please feel free to let me know where you ended up and I will let you know if you were on the right track!

Geocaching is an increasingly popular pastime. It involves hiding a small container of ‘treasure’ and then providing either the GPS coordinates directly, or (as in this example), a number of clues to enable the treasure hunter to work out the coordinates for themselves. Once found, the finder usually enters some remarks in a log book, sends the owner of the’geocache’ an e-mail, registers the find on a web site etc. Typically, the finder replaces one of the fun ‘treasure objects’ with an item of their own.

This cache was hidden in August 2009. Give it a try. Hopefully it will be fun whether you are a tourist or a local. You should plan at least ninety minutes to do the whole thing. There is bit of walking involved so if you are attempt the cache in the summer months, you might prefer to avoid the heat of the midday sun.

We start in the Upper Barraka Gardens with a fantastic view of the historic Grand Harbour. Look out over the creeks and the three cities of Vittoriosa, Senglea & Cospicua and imagine what they must have looked like crammed with British warships and merchantmen. In the closing years of the 19th Century, Britain had and Empire and, believe it or not, the tiny island of Malta had a railway! It ran from Valletta to Mdina and was known locally as Xmundifer (a delicious corruption of Chemin de Fer – in Maltese the letter X is pronounced SH). The Malta railway is going to provide the loose theme for this cache.

Directly below you as you look out over the harbour is the Saluting Battery. If you are here at mid day you will be treated to a salvo from the ceremonial canon. How many canon can you see? As this is the first question, I’ll give you a hint…. Do not be too hasty. You might need to lean over the railings a bit to make sure you don’t miss anything (be careful though).

Answer A: There are ____ canon on the saluting battery.

Once you have had your fill of views of the Grand Harbour (will you ever have enough?), leave the Upper Barraka Gardens, and cross the road so that you are in front of the ‘Auberge de Castille’. There are two canon on the steps of the Auberge. Directly in front of the building is a roundabout (a traffic circle if you are from the USA). The roundabout is a miniature botanical garden with scores of chilli pepper plants scattered amongst date palms. The second question concerns the number of palm trees that are planted around the circumference of the roundabout.

Answer B: There are ____ palm trees planted around the circumference of the roundabout.

From the ‘Auberge de Castille’, walk down the slope and pass the police station on your right hand side. In front of you are the remains of a large building that was destroyed by AXIS bombers during the second world war. The ruins remind us of the dark days when the area around the Grand Harbour was the most heavily bombed place on earth. The third question is a multiple choice. If you don’t know the answer, ask one of the locals – they are quite friendly!

If you think that the building was an indoor market, then answer C = 1

If you think that the building was the Opera House, then answer C = 2

If you think that the building was an The Malta Stock Exchange, then answer C = 3

Now make your way across the square towards Valletta City Gate and, if you are interested, make a short detour to seek out the site of the old railway station (you can skip this bit if you are in a hurry as there are no clues there). Next to the Tourist Information office you will find a flight of stairs leading down to the ‘Great Ditch’ that separates Valletta from Floriana. Ignore the faint smell of urine and make your way to the bottom where you will find a car repair workshop in tunnel that was the original station. The small steam trains crossed the ditch on a small viaduct before entering a longer underground section taking them underneath the bus terminus on their way to Floriana station. Take a deep breath and go back up the stairs. Leave Valletta via the city gate and look out across the bus terminus. In the center is the famous Triton Fountain which may or may not be working when you visit. Count the number of figures supporting the massive bowl.

Answer D: There are ____ figures supporting the bowl

On the other side of the roundabout you will see the shining gold top of the Royal Airforce Memorial. Make your way towards it but be very careful of the buses. A few meters past the memorial is a huge underground car park which I believe bisects the original railway tunnel. In front of you now you can see the church of St Publius, named after the Roman Governor of Malta who was converted to Christianity in AD60 by none other than St Paul following his well documented shipwreck (Acts. Chapter Verse) on the northern coast of Malta. In front of the church is a large square which covers a network of underground granaries (more of this later). To the right of the church from your viewpoint, is a long garden – the ??? gardens also called ‘the Mall’. Make your way to the ‘Indipenza’ statue just outside and to the north of the Mall. Check the inscription on the statue and make a note of all three parts of the date that Malta became independent.

Answer E is the day: ____

Answer F is the month (you will need to convert from Roman Numerals): ____

Answer G is the year: ____

The railway tunnel runs somewhere under the Mall gardens but there is no access (that I know of). Various prominent Maltese citizens are commemorated along the central area of the gardens. Look for the bust of Sir Hannibal Scicluna, one of Malta’s most emminent (and probably oldest) Historians. Subtract his year of birth from his year of death (which may or may not equal his age) to arrive at the answer for the next question. The inscription on the plinth is a little faint so please look carefully. I had to step into the flower beds to get a clear look.

Answer H: Death year ____ minus birth year ____ = ____

Leave the Mall gardens by one of the side exits and cross over into the square in front of St Publius’. The large stone blocks that you see are actually the covers to the grain stores. How many covers are there in all? Take care because not all rows contain equal numbers of covers. I had to count them several times before coming up with a consistent answer!

Answer I: There are ____ stone blocks covering the grain stores.

Now for the final section of our journey, it is a bit of a walk (perhaps 10 minutes) so gather your strength and walk down Sarria Street past the church (on your right) and make your way to the end. Floriana station used to be somewhere here but the building was demolished relatively recently (perhaps in the late 1990s?). Who knows what remains of the underground part. At the top of the road you will reach the very impressive Argotti Botanical Gardens. Definitely worth a visit if you are at all horticulturally inclined. There is also a reasonably presentable public toilet. For the purposes of our little adventure, let’s assume you don’t need the toilet and that you will visit the gardens another time. Sarria street makes a 90 degree turn to the left. Follow it down hill to where it meets the very busy main road (Triq Sant Anna). Turn right and walk for a few more minutes until you see the ‘Porte de Bombes’ straddling the road. Traffic in and out of Floriana passes under or around this gate. How many arches does it have.

Answer J: The Porte de Bombes has ____ arches.

So, you have answered all of the questions. Now you need to turn the answers to the questions into GPS coordinates to be able to find the cache….

N 35° [I-E-D] . [G-1960] [F-D-C] [A-B-C]

E 14° [H-I+F-D] . [F+J-B] [A-F] [D]

That’s it! If you find the cache, please replace it as you found it an please post a comment here. If you have any trouble, or find that the cache has been damaged, please also post a short message. You can read messages from people who have already found the cache at geocaching.com.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=36b79652-ce29-48f9-898d-1e3670785dbd

As Europe tore itself apart during the second world war, Malta nudged it’s way into the record books as the most heavilly bombed place on earth. More bombs rained down on Malta in April 1942 alone that on London during the blitz. In that month 6700 tons of bombs rained down on the island. By comparison, approximately 500 tons of high explosive are thought to have fallen in the devastating Coventry blitz of 1940.

To avoid this hell, the people of Malta spent a large part of their life underground in an elaborate network of shelters. Some of which can be visited today.

Mgarr Shelter

In the square in front of Mgarr’s impressive parish church is the “Il-Barri” restaurant. It has an excellent reputation for it’s traditional Maltese rabbit dishes but I had come to see the air raid shelter that is accessed through the back of the restaurant.  I paid a modest 3 euro and was asked to wait a few minutes whilst the lights were switched on in the shelter. Then I was taken downstairs and was shown a newsreel film of Malta’s wartime privations. When the film was over we (me and one of the girls from the restaurant – I was the only visitor) passed through a door into the shelter itself. I was completely taken aback at the scale of what I saw.

The tunnel extends more than 200 metres underneath the center of Mgarr and would have had multiple entrances (nine if I remember correctly). The tunnel twists and turns and there are recreations of first aid posts, family rooms and school classrooms in little rooms off the main tunnel. I asked my guide whether she was from Mgarr. She was – her grandmother had given birth to one of her children here in this dark damp place.

Malta at War Museum

 Another shelter that is open to the public can be found at the ‘Malta at War Museum’ close to the Couvre’ Porte gate in Vittoriosa. It is maintained by ‘ Wirtartna’, Malta’s Heritage Trust and when I visited, was staffed by two history students dressed in period military uniforms. After donning hairnets and safety helmets, we were lead underground through the gas proof (covered by a wet sack), blast proof (reinforced by a concrete lintel) door.

This shelter was one of about ninety under the city of Vittoriosa alone. Goodness knows what state the rest of them are in but the Couvre Porte shelter is in pretty good shape. Residents would have beed issued with a pass indicating which shelter they were to go to in the event of a raid. Of course, people were frequently in ‘the wrong place’ when an air raid started and they would be accomodated in the closest shelter. If it was full, they would make a dash to alternative an so on until space was found for them.

The steep set of stairs leads from the museum entrance past an infirmary area and into the main accommodation area of the shelter. In this network of dark, damp, smelly passages, hundreds of people would wait for hours on end until the raids finished. Today, the tunnels are lit by electric lamps but during the war there were no such luxuries. In niches cut into the rock, makeshift lamps burned olive oil and gave off a dim and smoky light. It must have smelled like a chip shop!

Families could get a little bit of privacy by renting a tiny room off one of the main passages. The only catch is that they had to dig the room themselves out of the solid rock! Limestone is quite soft as rock goes but it must still have been quite an effort working for hours on end with a pick axe in those airless conditions.  My dad remembers digging a room with his father in their shelter in the village of Tarxien. 

At intervals in the Couvre Porte shelter there were signs advising the shelter dwellers…

• Don’t commit nuisances
• Don’t smoke
• Don’t spit

I would have thought that both smoking and spitting would have been consideres nuisances and that the first line would have been sufficient, even in the chaos of wartime Malta. Were the good people of Vittoriosa such heavy smokers and flambouyant spitters that these misdemeanors had to be called out separately? 

Talking of nuisances, image several hundred people gathered in one place for several hours with terrifying things happening all around them. The toilets would have been in quite some demand. The facilities in the shelter were rudimentary but adequate. A small room, curtained off from the main tunnel contained two wooden lavatories opposite each other. One of the less enviable jobs of the shelter officials was to empty the toilets after each raid.

 

I first read about the Malta Railway in Nicholas Monserrats book, “The Kapillan of Malta”. This book was mostly set during the second world war and manages to weave a great deal of Maltese history into the story of ‘Dun Salv’ and his troglodyte parishioners.

The steam railway was opened in 1883 and ran from Valletta to Mdina. It lurched from financial crisis to financial crisis for the next 48 years and was almost forgotten by Dun Salv’s day. At the time of writing this, 78 years after the railway ceased to exist, there are still traces if you know where to look.

I didn’t know where to look but luckily a bit of googling turned up an excellent guide to “Walking the old Malta Railway” by Don Gaunt. Armed with a printed copy of this, I set out to walk the first few kilometers of the railway. I was only in Malta for a weekend so the rest of the route would have to wait for my next visit.

Crossing the bridge in front of Valletta’s city gate you can look down to your right and see the low arches of another bridge, emerging from a tunnel and crossing the Great Ditch that was part of Valletta’s ancient fortifications. Access to this level is via an unmarked door and a steep set of steps close to the tourist information office, just inside the city gate. Try to ignore the strong smell of urine and make your way down to the bottom of the steps. A garage now occupies the site of the original station.

Cross the bridge to the other side of the ditch and you will find the tunnel entrance has been sealed with limestone blocks and an iron gate.

When I visited, the gate was loosely secured with a chain and padlock. If I had been considerably thinner and armed with a powerful flashlight, I might have been tempted to squeeze betwen the gates and investigate further.

As it was, I retraced my steps up to the Valletta bus terminus and followed Mr Gaunt’s directions to Floriana.

The path of the tunnel is apparently interupted by the large underground car park next to the RAF memorial. It continues underneath the narrow gardens next to the square in front of Floriana’s parish church. Who knows what state the tunnels are in these days. I would love to find out!

Don Gaunt’s guide locates the remains of Floriana railway staion close to the end of these gardens. He notes that in 1995 there was a demolition order posted. I was unable to find the station so presumably the order has been carred out. From here, I wandered down to the left and joined the main road into Valletta. Not far along this busy road is the Porte de Bombes, and to the right of this is the Notre Dame Ditch where, after about a kilometer of inky blackness, the tunnel finally emerges into the Maltese sunlight. Of course, this entrance is also sealed.

Now we are at the last row of Valletta’s defences, the so-called “Fausse Bray” Here the little trains passed through one more set of ramparts before crossing the low ditch on a stone viaduct to continue their journey towards Hamrun. My journey stopped here this evening in this beautiful, overgrown, secluded place, a stonesthrow from Malta’s capital city. I will come back soon and resume my walk.

If you are going to spend any time in Malta, I strongly recommend that you rent a car. Nevertheless, your visit wouldn’t be complete without a ride on one of the 500 or so, colourful Maltese buses.

The routes radiate out like a star from the Valletta bus terminus, just outside the city gate.  Until 1973 you could tell the destination of the bus just by looking at it’s colour – Sliema was green and white, Zabbar was red and white with a blue stripe etc. Check out Alan Edwards’ fascinating site for some more examples and a lot more historical information. Nowadays, the buses all have numbers. You can find a route plan, timetables and more information online at the Maltese Pulic Transport association’s web site.

Walk around the Triton fountain at the Valletta bus terminus and (ignoring the newer types) you will find it very difficult to find two buses of exactly the same design. Most of them have locally built bodies which have been modified and customised over the years. The badges and emblems on the front of the buses carry names like Dodge, Leyland, Bedford etc. Real bus buffs (I do not count myself as one) will know these are there mainly for decorative reasons, and are seldom an acurate reflection of the vehicle’s origins. It used to be common to find an elaborate shrine or statue of a patron saint mounted in the drivers compartment. Now you are equally likely to find football penants and the like decorating the cab.

Recently the number of really old buses has diminished considerably. Imported Chinese ‘King Long’ types are more environmentally friendly and possibly even more comfortable than the older types but you could ride a modern bus back home. My advice is to walk around the Triton fountain at the bus terminus and simply choose the bus that looks the nicest – who cares where it is going, you are on holiday. Make sure that you have got the correct change ready and pay the (usually) surly driver as you get on. Hold on tight and enjoy the ride. If you are seated anywhere near the front, you will notice that most drivers sit well to the right of their steering wheel. The reason for this as any Maltese will tell you, is to leave space for their Guardian Angel to sit along side them.

Comino is the small island in the channel between Malta and Gozo. It has one solitary hotel, no roads to speak of, and probably the  most beautiful bathing beach in all of Malta. Comino’s famous Blue Lagoon, seen here from the cabin of a tiny microlight aircraft, attracts hundreds of day visitors.

Getting to the Blue Lagoon inevitably involves a 20 minute trip in a small boat. If you are coming from Malta you will find a number of operators offering trips from the Ċirkewwa ferry terminal and from the jetty opposite the Riviera Resort Hotel.  On the other side of the Gozo channel, you will find boats leaving from Mgarr harbour. Just follow the signs.

Make a day of it and get an early start, especially if your visit is in the high season. It can get pretty crowded. Reserve couple of square meters to dump your belongings (nothing valuable please) and jump into the amazing crystal clear waters of the lagoon.

You can spend hours paddling around the shallower parts of the bay, watching the shoals of tiny fish flicker and flash amongst the rocks. My tip for the more adventurous of you is to cross the lagoon to the islet of Cominotto and swim through the tunnel (right in the middle of the picture above) out to the open sea. Here is a short UNDERWATER video of my kids snorkelling and splashing their way around the lagoon:

The tunnel is dark and cold compared to the tepid waters of the lagoon. Swim through slowly and carefully and as you reach the end you will emerge into a very deep, crystal clear bay. If you are snorkelling, you will see much larger fish many metres below. The water will have much more of a ‘swell’ than in the sheltered waters on the other side of Cominotto. No problem if you are a confident swimmer but remember, you won’t be able to climb out of the water on the south side of Cominotto as the rocks are too steep. You will either have to return through the tunnel or swim around the islet.

Eventually you will have had your fill of snorkelling and sun-bathing and it will be time to head back to the mainland. With any luck the skipper of your boat will take the scenic route back to Malta stopping of at some of the tiny inlets and sea caves that pepper the rocky coast of Comino. Keep your camera at the ready. 

And finally, here is the map…..

Map

If you find yourself near Qrendi with a bit of time on your hands, the enormous sinkhole at il Maqluba is well worth a visit. The hole was formed in 1343 when the roof collapsed on a massive cave. It left a ‘Solution Subsidence Structure’ – a crater hundreds of feet across and between 40 and fifty metres deep.

Il Maqluba is pretty well hidden so you are unlikely to come across it by accident. The easiest way is to follow Triq Il Tempesta – the road that leads to Qrendi from Mqabba and continue with Qrendi on your right side until you come to the chapel of Saint Matthew in a little square (more of a triangle actually). You will find an overgrown path leading to il Maqluba on the left side of the chapel.

There is a simple observation area where you can look out over the crater. The bottom is covered with bamboo, sandarac gum, carob and pomegranate trees. Unfortunately, the last time I visited it was also covered with a certain amount of rubbish.

As well as the strictly geological explanatation for Maqluba’s existance, there is a much more colourful local legend. The short version goes something like this…

“In and around the current site of Maqluba, there was a small hamlet full of wicked people. Exact details of their transgressions are not recorded but, they received several warnings from God through the offices of a virtuous local woman. She was shrugged off as a nosey neighbor so God took direct action by blowing the little village of the face of the planet. The remains landed upside down in the sea off Malta’s southern coast and is today known as the island of Filfla.”

In many arabic dialects, Maqluba means upside down!

Partially hidden by a large wild fig tree, a set of rough hewn steps leads down towards the bottom of Maqluba. I am not sure who cut these stairs but I can think of at least four reasons not to use them.

1. They are steep and worn and definitely not safe.
2. After about 15 meters, the stairs are blocked by a fallen boulder. You can only pass by wriggling underneath this huge stone on your stomach.
3. The steps do not go right to the bottom of the crater. You will have to clamber down the last couple of meters of rocks, ideally leaving a rope so that you can get back up.
4. There is nothing to see at the bottom except rubbish and trees. The views are much better from the top.

Maqluba really is at it’s most spectacular when seen from above but If you are still interested in what it looks like at the bottom, take a look at my short video of when I climbed down with two of my cousins’ hubands and a small dog in summer 2007. It was about 08.00 on a Sunday morning….

Use this Google Map to plan your trip to Maqluba…

Getting there.

The Maltese Islands are rich in Neolithic sites. Ggantija in Gozo, Tarxien, and the Hagar Qim/Mnajdra complex here on Malta’s south coast are perhaps the most well known. These piles of stones are some of the earliest known man made structures in the world. They are showing their age a bit but what would you expect for buildings that are five and and a half thousand years old. My house was built in the year 2000 and is already looking a little frayed round the edges. These temples are older than the pyramids!

Mnajdra and Hagar Qim are currently being covered by new steel shelters that will minimise further damage by the elements. Of course this is the right thing to do but it is likely to destroy some of the atmosphere of this incredible, wild and atmospheric place.

In my opinion the temples are best seen after the visitors have left. Come with me for a late afternoon walk down the hill past Hagar Qim towards the Mnajdra complex. There are chain link fences around the temples now but we can ignore those and try to image why Malta’s earliest inhabitants went to the trouble of building these structures on this windy and barren hillside.

The sun is setting over Africa 200 hundred miles away. When we reach Mnajdra, let’s sit down and wait for that ‘plop’ when the sun and the sea merge in a soft orange haze. The rocks are still warm and the dusty wild thyme smells the same as it did to our distant ancestors that built this place.

Of course the temples would have looked rather different in their heyday. They may have been decorated with pigments and possibly even roofed with animal hides or other materials. Who knows? We do know that they were a altered and added to over a 1000 or so year period. Watch this short YouTube clip from my ‘Malta by Microlight’ DVD and imagine…

From Mnajdra, you can see the small flat-topped island of Filfla. It is rather tatty round the edges having been damaged by an earthquake in 1856 and (probably more seriously) by having been used as target practice by the Royal Airforce and the Navy. Despite this, Filfla is now a nature reserve and home to many interesting species.

Getting to Mnajdra and Hagar Qim is easiest if you have a car. Alternatively, if you don’t mind a hike, you could get a bus to Qrendi (3 km away) or Zurrieq (5 km away) and walk from there. Warning: although the distances are not too great, walking several kilometers in the Maltese sun can be very strenuous and possibly dangerous. Take water and sunscreen.

Consult the map below for details. If you click on the ‘Powered by Google’ logo on the bottom left of the logo, Google Maps will op0n in a new window and you can work out how to get to the temples from your specific location. Note: The ‘get directions’ feature in Google Maps doesn’t appear to work for Malta yet but the road network is so simple that you can probably work things out for yourself.

Hagar Qim