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Hamrun’s mid-summer Madness

2/8/2014

A visit to Hamrun is hardly on anyone’s bucket list but once a year the Hamrunizi let their hair down and it’s quite an experience...

Hamrun is a largish and mostly nondescript working men’s town just a mile or so outside Valletta. By Maltese standards it is a relatively “new” town, its lavishly decorated if stylistically confused church only being completed in 1875 and the town itself only becoming a parish in 1881. Hamrun has a wide and fine shop-filled main road which is unfortunately also the main trunk road from Valletta to Rabat and Mdina and therefore choked with traffic at most times of the day. But for one day a year all the traffic disappears and Saint Joseph’s High Road becomes the largest pedestrian area in Malta as Hamrun celebrates the feast of its patron – the somewhat obscure Saint Cajetan.

The feast of Saint Cajetan is celebrated on the Sunday following the 7th of August (this year on the 10th). What the feast lacks in the fireworks department (there are hardly any open spaces around the town which allow for sizeable displays) it however makes up with its band marches.

The evening marches are spread out over a whole week but it’s the traditional Sunday morning march that is the real peak of merriment and boisterousness. The town’s two band clubs of St. Joseph (nicknamed Tal-Miskina) and St.Cajetan (Tat-Tamal) participate in this march and both attract a sizeable crowd of followers, loyally dressed in the clubs colours – blue and red respectively. Due to the immense rivalry between the clubs the band marches take a different route and do not meet. Both marches are also obliged to start and end at the same time – start time is normally around 11am and the marathon marches continue until 3pm, usually in blazing sunlight and temperatures hovering around the 30c mark. The clubs also have a signed agreement not to let things get out of hand and this is religiously adhered to – not least because there are hefty financial penalties relating to any departure from acceptable behaviour.

If this is starting to sound somewhat intimidating rest assured it isn’t. The rivalry is mostly good-natured and the opposing fans mingle, embrace and drink (and then drink some more) together. Rowdy and mischievous it does get though – the bands just love stopping in front of the rival club’s premises and playing to their heart’s content while the followers indulge in some bawdy and not too Christian chanting. Some of the clubs’ fans also wear themed fancy costumes and face-paint which add to the colour and the general carnival mood. Just don’t come in your Sunday best…

It’s truly a mad feast of colour, sweaty good fun, beer aplenty and one which every Hamruniz will tell you is unique to the islands. Trust me, I’m one.

This article was first published in the August 2014 issue of Il-Bizzilla - the Air Malta inflight magazine

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Beyond the Azure Window – Getting lost in Gozo

2/12/2013

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Nearly every visitor to Gozo makes the obligatory whistle-stop tour to Dwejra and its photogenic Azure window. This is quite understandable – Dwejra is a World Heritage site with its unique fossil studded rock formations, the Fungus Rock and the steep sided Dwejra Bay sheltering behind it, plus the so called Inland Sea – a popular shingle beach permanently protected from rough sea by the sheer cliff wall virtually cutting it off from the deep blue Mediterranean beyond. Dwejra is also the most popular dive site in the Maltese Islands and considered by most as a world class site.

Few people give the area the time it deserves and fewer still wander beyond the rock- hewn window. But if you have the time it is well worth it. You’ll need plenty of that, four hours by my reckoning if you want to reach the next town walking mostly gentle gradients; but it’s an awesome, remote trek across a part of Gozo which is uncharacteristically arid and immensely uplifting to the senses.

Leave the car park and walk up to and beyond the chapel overlooking the Inland Sea. The chapel itself is quite unremarkable so a miss is quite in order. The top of the cliffs give one a beautiful view of the inland sea with its boathouses and cafes. Cross over to the opposite cliffside (the one overlooking the sea) and basically you can now follow the coastline. The observant rambler will probably notice a profusion of grey-leaved plants. This is the Maltese Everlasting, (Helichrysum melitense) a very rare endemic plant found only in this corner of Gozo and nowhere else worldwide. Needless to say this is a legally protected species and should not in any way be damaged. The plant produces a golden yellow flower head between April and June.

There are two quarries immediately after you leave Dwejra but once past these there are hardly any man-made intrusions except for the odd hunting hide – some tottering precariously on the cliff’s edge. The coast follows a wide curve allowing you to view the Azure window from a completely new angle. This stretch is an important bird area – it is estimated that it supports some 500 pairs of Cory’s Shearwaters and between 30 and 50 pairs of Yelkouan Shearwaters. The Yelkouan is endemic to the Mediterranean basin and is a globally threatened species with an estimated population of between 15 and 30 thousand pairs worldwide – Malta has about 1,500 pairs.

In an hour or so you should reach San Dimitri point – the Maltese Islands’ most westerly point. From here the walking is in an easterly direction and one soon comes across Wied ir-Raheb – a deep cleft in the cliffs that falls dramatically to the sea below. Walk a little way inland to go round this elevated river valley to follow the coast again on the valley’s eastern side. The cliffs here are high and mighty coralline ones but soon give way to a gentler, smoother cream colored limestone plateau. Look out for a particularly quaint rock formation – a mushroom shaped one created by a cap of the harder coralline stone over a stump of the more easily eroded globigerina limestone.

The next river valley you will come across is Wied il-Mielah. There is a natural arch where this valley meets the sea…not as well known and certainly not as celebrated as the Dwejra one but equally dramatic nonetheless. Steps lead down to sea level for a better view.

Beyond Wied il-Mielah the limestone plateau continues for another kilometer or so until the cliffs are broken again by the beautiful Wied il-Ghasri, a fjord-like drowned river valley with its own miniscule pebble beach wedged between the high cliffs. Rock-cut stairs lead to the beach and the detour is well worth it as this is one of Gozo’s seriously beautiful spots.

Moving on from Wied il-Ghasri the limestone plateau continues and the gradient is gently downhill. This part of the coast has the largest stretch of salt pens in the islands, still worked and harvested by hand to this day. There is a cute hole-in-the-wall salt shop if you want to buy some of the stuff. You will soon reach Xwejni Bay – another popular summer bathing spot, with a curious conical clay form at its eastern end.

Between Xwejni and the next bay (Qbajjar) is a newly restored Knights’ redoubt.

Beyond Qbajjar Bay there is a lovely north facing promenade and once past that you are now in Marsalforn proper. Marsalforn is Gozo’s most important resort town, pretty crowded in summer but blissfully quiet in the winter months. You will be lucky to find a couple of bars open on the front, as after this longish route you will definitely cherish a good local beer and perhaps a hobza biz-zejt to go with it…

Both start and end points of this walk are served with hourly bus services from Victoria so having your own car is not an issue, the bus is in fact the better alternative since this is not a circular route.

This article was first published in the December 2013 edition of Il-Bizzilla - the Air Malta inflight magazine

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Walking the Line

1/11/2013

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When Britain took control of Malta in 1800 the island was already an impressively defended place. From the earliest times Bronze Age settlers had chosen easily defended hilltops in which to settle and enhanced them with strong defensive walls; the Romans constructed a large defended town in the island’s center and built curious round towers in the countryside, the Arabs fortified a smaller Mdina.

And then of course the Knights of St. John came here in 1530 – still licking their wounds from a resounding defeat which resulted in the forced abandonment of their previous island home in Rhodes. Immediately after the very testing Great Siege of 1565 they set about throwing up defences everywhere…massively walled cities complete with dry moats, coastal forts, watch towers and entrenchments. These assured that the dreaded Ottomans would never mount another serious attack to take over the islands. The defences were indeed impregnable: so much so that when the Knights meekly surrendered the Islands to Napoleon some two hundred and fifty years later - and the islanders in turn rebelled against the latter conquerors - the French managed to hold on inside Valletta’s thick walls for more than a year, and then it was only the total blockade of the city by the British that ultimately forced the French capitulation.
The British continued in the steps of all previous occupiers. They built a series of low profile, inconspicuous coastal forts more adapted to the warfare technology of the time. And after being here for nearly a century they were still jittery about the north coast’s vulnerability to invading forces and so they came up with an altogether fantastic and pretentious project...
The concept of the Victoria Lines was a great defensive wall practically dividing the island between the more populated and well defended south, and the sparsely inhabited and less crucial (to British interests) north. The wall was planned to follow a natural geographical barrier which cuts across the island, running roughly from Madliena in the east through to Kuncizzjoni at its western end – a total of approximately twelve kilometers. Construction started in the early 1870’s and the works were only completed in 1897 – the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

At each end of the wall – Pembroke and Kuncizzjoni – barracks were constructed, and the wall itself includes massive forts in strategic places; Fort Madliena, Fort Mosta and Fort Bingemma – each one guarding vulnerable locations – the first the eastern end of the wall where the terrain is flat, while the latter two guard areas where the natural cliff barrier is breached by an easily accessible valley.

The project took so long to build that by 1900, a mere three years after completion, steady advances in warfare technology revealed that the Victoria Lines were of dubious defensive value and by 1907 the whole defensive system was practically abandoned.

It is not easy to walk the line in its completeness. There are parts where time has taken its toll and it is difficult to trace out the wall. In other places modern roads and construction have wiped out or made the wall traces all but easy on the eye.

One notable exception is the stretch of the wall from Bingemma to Falka Gap - the part known as the Dwejra Lines. Here one can get a good feel of the wall and its clever meandering along steep cliffsides. Setting off from near the small chapel at Bingemma, you can start with a small diversion to the valley bed beneath –across which rises Malta’s largest rock-cut complex of tombs – a collection of more than 30 hypogea honeycombing the hillside. Opinion varies whether this site is of Phoenician or Roman origin but at any rate it’s worth exploring this ancient burial ground.

Backtrack up to the chapel, and a little way uphill and to your left (near a sizeable info board) there is a small path that will take you across the massive wall that crosses the valley. Once across, turn right and follow the line along some of its steeper edges – there are impressive views over the countryside below for the two kilometers or so of this part of the wall with the picturesque village of Mgarr with its oval dome featuring prominently over the surroundings. You can take time to explore bits and pieces of the wall itself; the ditch, gun emplacements and ancillary structures run along the length of the wall.

Once at the Falka end of the Dwejra lines, make your way back along the country road that runs more or less parallel and at some distance to the wall, and which takes you back to Bingemma. This road overlooks the Qlejgha Valley, more popularly known as Chadwick Lakes, so named after the engineer who constructed the massive water catchments in this important and flood prone valley. It is a quiet country road with beautiful vistas over to Mtarfa ridge and Mdina beyond, dotted with typical farmhouses and the odd country villa. The whole walk is less than five kilometers long and the gradients and terrain are mostly easy. Come any time during the week to enjoy the silence and solitude but be warned that all of this area is a favourite playground for the locals on any Sunday in the cooler months – which is not too bad an idea if you want to mingle… or just smell the barbecued sausages!

This article was first published in the November 2013 edition of Il-Bizzilla -
the Air Malta inflight magazine

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Streets and Churches of Western Gozo

1/10/2013

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Everyone and his dog will tell you that Gozo is a different place from Malta; the place is definitely greener, the pace is slower, the traffic negligible… and laid back appears to be the operating system of the place.

While a stroll through some villages in Malta may entail a constant watch for oncoming traffic squeezing through impossibly narrow streets, there is little or none of it on Gozo - and more so in the cooler months when the slow pace of life gets even more lethargic with fewer tourists around. At times you will walk through a place and get the feel it is completely deserted except for the fact that most houses appear well kept and a dog will bark or a cock crow somewhere to shatter the illusion.

If you are staying in Gozo for any length of time (lucky you) a village crawl is a pleasant way to familiarize oneself with the place and an ideal spot to set off is the hilltop village of Zebbug.

Zebbug actually sits across two adjoining hillocks bridged by a narrow ridge. There is not much in the way of built environment to lure you here actually, but the views from practically every street corner are nothing short of stunning – collectively providing a 360 degree vista of the island. The simple parish church dominates the airy central square. The church’s main point of interest is the extensive use of a limestone form of onyx quarried from a nearby hill. This decorative stone was utilized extensively in local church decorations but here in Zebbug they really went overboard…altar, columns, confessional boxes and baptismal font are all carved from this rather pretty pinkish stone.

Picture perfect- the tiny village of Ghasri viewed from Zebbug

You can move to the next village, Ghasri, via the broad main road; but a more interesting way is to make your way down the steep Triq il-Kanun (ask for it if you can’t find it) which winds its way through terraced fields and ends besides a small chapel sitting next to the watercourse of Wied il-Ghasri. Make your way upstream via the road and another ten minutes will get you to Ghasri village proper. Ghasri is even smaller than Zebbug and similarly quiet. You will probably come across instances of keys kept in front door locks – a sure sign of the lack of any serious crime in these parts. This probably also explains why the Police station here (and in most of the other villages) is invariably closed!

Take the winding Triq il-Fanal to the right of the Ghasri parish church – an open road with good views of the Ghammar hill on the left and the Gordan lighthouse perched on the next hill. You will walk past the tiny hamlet of Ghammar – the smallest settlement in Gozo consisting of just one street and a few alleys; even its tiny chapel is well hidden in a side lane.

Past tiny Ghammar the lovely Ta Pinu National Shrine comes into view, sited majestically in the open countryside. Built in the 1920’s in the Romanesque style, this is probably the loveliest church erected in the twentieth century in the Maltese Islands – not least because of the richness of design in the sculpted decorations inside, with innumerable variations of abstract carving and no single motif repeated anywhere. This is also a place of great devotion and a magnet for pilgrims all year round - take time to look at the huge (if somewhat bizarre) collection of votive offerings inside the church; witness to an Island’s deep rooted faith. The greatest day in the history of the church was probably 26th May 1990 – when the late Pope John Paul II – the first Pontiff to visit Malta, let alone Gozo - celebrated Holy Mass in the piazza and all of Gozo flocked here to greet him.

If you are feeling energetic you might want to trudge up the Way of the Cross which starts across the road in front of the church…it’s a steep climb to the top of Ghammar hill with statues depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ dotted along the way. Needless to say there’s a breathtaking panorama from the top.

Leaving Ta Pinu, retrace your steps by a couple of hundred feet and take the road which will lead you to the next village – Gharb. It’s another country road which passes over the valley below via a newly restored stone bridge and affords splendid views of Ta Pinu church’s eastern end and belfry.

Gharb is the remotest village in Gozo and one of the oldest as well. Look out for a number of ancient stone balconies on buildings – rare almost everywhere else but quite common here. There is a lovely parish church with a curious concave façade dating from 1699 gracing the village’s main square. A privately owned folklore museum housed in an eighteenth century house also graces the square. Its twenty eight rooms give a comprehensive view of trades and crafts formerly practiced in the Islands, with an extensive collection of related tools and implements.

This article was first published in the October 2013 edition of Il-Bizzilla - the Air Malta inflight magazine

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Lapsi - Rocks of Ages

5/5/2013

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With a population density of nearly 1300 per square kilometer – the highest in the EU and one of the highest worldwide – getting far from the madding crowd may seem like an impossible ask for the visitor here. But not quite… The Maltese are officially (and regrettably) the least active nation in Europe and most people will take to their car for the smallest of errands. Not terribly good for the Maltese waistline but convenient if you plan to see a slice of a different, truly unspoilt Malta in some splendid solitude.

The coastline to the east of Ghar Lapsi is one such haven. If you are not driving, getting here is not without a little nastiness. On the way down there is a huge dusty quarry which isn’t quite the best introduction to this area, but once past this unsightly behemoth the road winds down with open sea and country views. Ghar Lapsi itself is a popular bathing spot in summer – a rare accessible break in the otherwise mighty cliffs that girdle most of the southern coast of the Island. There’s a small cluster of buildings around the two coves of Lapsi – a couple of restaurants, one row of small summer residences, a police station, and right down by the sea a few boathouses, some of which are hewn from the live rock. And of course, a scattering of small boats to complete the picture.

Head for the car park on the edge of the built up area. You will readily notice the huge signs warning you not to stray beyond the car park - no doubt put up by a well meaning but aesthetically blind representative of some authority or other. The signs were only erected after a recent rock fall practically made a good part of the bathing area below all but inaccessible. Politely ignore the sign but use common sense nevertheless - always tread a good three to four meters from the cliff edge.

There is a well trodden path here which is easy to make out in most places. You will be immediately struck by the high cliff to your left, an awesome mass of brownish rock with a few caves high up on the slope. This is a popular rock climbing site – but since this activity was only introduced here recently and is only practiced by a hardcore few, crowds of rock huggers will not be a problem.

A short uphill trudge will get you past the first inlet and then the path continues downhill again following the coast. This is a beautifully majestic area with cliffs and open sea views and, in the distance, the small uninhabited islet of Filfla. This serene picture makes it hard to imagine the (literally) earth shattering events occurring here a few million years back…

According to geologists, an event which must have been cataclysmic in proportion resulted in Filfla bidding farewell to Malta and a channel five kilometers wide opening up where the land collapsed into the sea. There is evidence of this too. The cliffs next to the sea here are made up of Upper Coralline Limestone – a rock stratum that naturally occurs three layers above the Lower Coralline Limestone – but the upper cliffs here are composed of the Lower Coralline! A weird inversion of the order of things at best; known in geological circles as the Maghlaq Fault. Really - you wouldn’t want to be here when it happened.

There is more for the observant eye here. Soon you cross the dry valley bed of Wied il-Maghlaq where the seasonal water course is unmistakably marked by a line of wild reeds. Where the valley bed meets the sea there is a layer of what appears to be brownish soil. In reality this is a stratum of Quaternary deposits left here from what must have once been a fast flowing stream or river… the fascinating detritus and rubbish of millions of years back; loose pebbles, mud, plant and animal remains - all coagulated into concrete hard sediment.

After the valley bed some gentle climbing is again called for and past the next inlet there is a five tongued promontory aptly called L-Ilsna (The Tongues) in Maltese. There are more deposits here and a small sea arch as well. Far above you is the first sign of civilization, a white tent-like structure. This is the canopy that now covers Mnajdra Temple from the elements and you should take this as your cue to start climbing to reach the upper cliff. Aim for a spot to the immediate right of the canopy where the climb is easiest and there is a natural opening in the cliff face.

Once you reach Mnajdra you might want to wander and have a closer look at the tower which is visible at some distance all along this walk. The Hamrija Tower, constructed in 1659 and recently restored, is one of a series built to the order of Grand Master De Redin. On the way to the tower there is a memorial stone commemorating Walter Norris Congreve who served as the colonial governor of Malta from 1924 to 1927. At his request he was buried at sea in the channel which separates Filfla from the mainland.

After this detour make your way to the road via Mnajdra and Hagar Qim temples.

This walk takes about two hours to complete but you will probably find you want to wander a bit longer than that. Always check the weather before setting out, wear light clothing and sensible, comfortable footwear.

This article was first published in the May 2013 edition of Il-Bizzilla - the Air Malta inflight magazine

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Hamrun’s mid-summer Madness

Beyond the Azure Window – Getting lost in Gozo

Walking the Line

Streets and Churches of Western Gozo

Lapsi - Rocks of Ages

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