Cartoons and Illustrations by Steve Bonello
  • Home
  • Drawings & Graphics
  • Editorial
  • Cartoon Strips
  • Illustrations
  • Unpublished
  • Scrapbook
  • Blog
  • Contact

The sea, a hallowed isle and a summer palace  

5/2/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Winters in Malta are generally mild with very few really cold days. The sun mercifully makes a welcome appearance on most days as well. Such days make for great walking in the countryside away from the bustling, busy towns. The Selmun promontory lying just to the east of the town of Mellieha is one such prime rambling area, offering diverse features and curiosities, and a rich variety of land and seascapes.

Starting from the roundabout at the entrance to Mellieha take the road marked Selmun. It’s an open country road with a few houses which make up the hamlet of Selmun strung along one side while the other side is construction-free with open views southwards. 

One soon comes upon Selmun Palace, the main building of note in the area sitting majestically on high ground. Though this fine building, built by the Knights in 1783, gives the impression of a fortified residence in reality its purpose was as a summer residence and glorified hunting lodge.

Take the road to the right of the palace and at the first bend in the road (about 100 meters past the palace) take the trek that suddenly appears to your right. The trek soon starts dipping steeply down the side of Mistra valley towards the bay. It’s a very scenic trek which winds its way between open fields on both sides. On the lower ground to the right is the site where most of the huge blocks for the Valletta breakwater were quarried by the British late in the nineteenth century, but you will be hard pressed to notice anything resembling degradation as the rehabilitation of the area after the quarrying was done is almost miraculous. At the very bottom of the trek a road opens up. Taking a left turn gets you to Mistra Bay in a couple of minutes. Mistra is a small horseshoe shaped inlet, thronged by the locals in summer but blissfully deserted in the winter months. The road circles the shallow inlet and heads towards the head of the bay where a coastal battery dating back to 1761 stands guards. The battery (access is not possible at time of writing) was restored in recent times by its present tenants, an aquaculture company.

From this point the road becomes a stony path which roughly follows the coastline along the cliffs of Rdum il-Bies. The small islet of St.Paul comes into view here. It is still hallowed ground for many, being reputedly the place where the saint was shipwrecked on his way to Rome to stand trial in AD.60. The 10th of February is marked in the local calendar as the presumed date of the shipwreck and is a public holiday. The day also marks the only major festa celebrated in winter – that of the parish of St.Paul Shipwrecked in Valletta.

An annual pilgrimage to the islet still takes place every summer. A statue of the saint, a ruined farmhouse and a few rubble walls are the only signs of human intrusion – the last inhabitants of the islet being a farmer’s family residing in happy seclusion until the early days of the twentieth century.

Past the islet the coastline becomes a gentler limestone shelf with some disused salt pans pockmarked in the smooth rock face. The salt pans continue around this last headland but it’s a dead end that way so the better option is to start trekking uphill along a dirt road running parallel with the clay slope. It’s the only rough track on this walk really – a trek hewn out of the clay throughout various years of abusive offroading in the area – a practice that is now illegal. At the top of the hill and to your left there is a long low wall and you should head that way. The wall is in fact the outer perimeter of Fort Campbell.

Fort Campbell’s real interest lies in the fact that it was the last major fortification to be built by the British in Malta. Built in the late 1930’s, its main function was to challenge enemy vessels approaching Grand Harbour. Its novel design which includes a very low profile and the rustic perimeter wall was primarily dictated by the need to avoid detection from the air. Sadly the wall is the only thing that is well preserved here, otherwise the fort (which one can enter freely) has been the victim of long years of neglect, pillaging and vandalism. The barracks around the fort are sadly in an equally dilapidated state.

Making your way out of this somewhat forlorn site you can follow the road back to Selmun Palace. It’s a gentle one kilometer or so to the palace and an immensely scenic road too as it hugs the edge of Mistra valley to its left and borders various fields and vineyards to its right. Two hours should be ample time to cover this relatively easy walk.


Picture
This article was first published in the February 2014 issue of Il-Bizzilla - the Air Malta inflight magazine
0 Comments

Ruts and Troglodytes

2/2/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Most visitors to Malta will have read about the so called cart ruts which can be found all over the island but many will find them difficult to locate, unless they stumble upon a pair or two on rocky outcrops in the countryside.


The cart ruts are sets of two parallel tracks gouged in the tough upper coralline limestone – usually around 150 centimeters apart and up to 60 centimeters deep and can run for just a few meters but sometimes for much longer than that. Some run weirdly over the edges of cliffs and some just disappear or simply peter out. Most archaeologists seem to agree that the ruts date to around 2000BC and were created by Bronze Age settlers from nearby Sicily, some time after the Neolithic Temple culture died out.

Most ruts occur in the vicinity of ancient stone quarries. Speculation as to their use varies, with some believing that sledges transporting goods over time eroded the rock and thus created the tracks while another theory states that they were made by wheeled carts eroding the limestone. Same difference really. However, up  to this day there is no conclusive explanation as to their use and they remain one of Malta’s most curious archaeological puzzles.  


One place where the cart ruts can definitely be made out and not be confused with anything else is Clapham Junction, a rocky outcrop just to the south of Buskett Gardens. Clapham Junction was the nickname given by British archaeologists investigating the site, most probably due to the profusion of the ruts here resembling the criss-crossing railway lines at this busy London station. The name has stuck and the signposts from Buskett use this improbable name to this date.

It’s a huge site and one cannot help wonder about the purpose of the ruts – here running riot into and over each other. A number of Punic tombs are also present on the rocky plateau as well as remnants of ancient quarries. More difficult to locate within the same site but definitely worth a look is Ghar il-Kbir - literally The Big Cave (the Maltese are not very creative with their monikers…). 


Ghar il-Kbir is one of Malta’s most noted troglodyte settlement sites with people recorded inhabiting the caves from as far back as the fifteenth century right up to 1835, when the last inhabitants were forcibly evicted by the British for sanitary purposes. It’s a collection of natural and rock cut interconnecting caves placed around what is best described as a sunken central “courtyard”. It’s quite a pleasant site too, with the spacious caves retaining warmth in winter while being pleasantly cool in the summer months.

The whole Clapham Junction area is also an important garigue habitat with a generous diversity of plant life which reaches its peak in the spring. Species to look for are the beautiful wild crocuses in the winter months and a variety of orchids in the spring – not least the Maltese Pyramidal and Spider orchids, both species endemic to the Maltese Islands.


Picture
The above article was originally published in the February 2014 newsletter of Chevron UK - Malta travel specialists since 1982. You may subscribe to Chevron's newsletter here.
0 Comments

    Categories

    All
    Addolorata
    Anthony Burgess
    Art
    Billboards
    Bio
    Bla Kondixin
    Boats
    Books
    Cartoonist Forum
    Cartoons
    Cats
    Cinque Terre
    Color
    Death
    Doodling
    Drawing
    European Union
    Exhibitions
    Failure
    Fireworks
    Flora
    Football
    Gaddafi
    Genoa
    George Fenech
    Gozo
    Hamrun
    Hiking
    Humour
    Il Bizzilla
    Illustrations
    Ink
    Interview
    Jobs
    Joy Division
    Krakow
    Ladies Of The Night
    Landscape
    Liguria
    Lija
    Majjistral
    Malta
    Marsaxlokk
    Merchandise
    Mordillo
    Motivation
    Mqabba
    Mugs
    Naples
    Nature
    Newspaper Cuttings
    Oslo
    Pens
    Photography
    Photoshop
    Pictograms
    Poland
    Promotion
    Ralph Steadman
    Riviera Del Levante
    Saint Francis
    Scrapbook
    Signs
    Skytime
    Staglieno
    Terror
    Travel
    Walks
    Wolverhampton Wanderers
    Work In Progress
    Youth

    Author

    Steve Bonello
    Malta

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    August 2017
    October 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011

Created by Steve Bonello