The plan was to have a sort of short day after my extra extras yesterday. However, this was to end up taking me just as long as the 2 sections I did the day before.
Starting by my old Ghadira roundabout. It is not raining, despite my weather app insisting that it is.Freddie has moved my bar to Malta (you won’t get this tag until you’ve read my 2nd novel. Pointless to put it in really).We get moving on this rural road heading up into the hills. The smell from the Pines and Acacia and so on, is just the biz.All these headlands have I conquered (prev. days).The pirates are coming! Didn’t do what I suggested and are now wandering aimlessly looking for something to pillage.Roman bee hives. Look more like bread ovens to me. And yes, they were directly on my path. I’m making myself scarce as that giant bee may be coming to visit his smaller bros.A cold hard man he was so, he deserves a cold hard seat.Abandoned WWII Radar station, looks like it is working away to me. The western-most point of Malta. Turning north-east now.Gozo across the channel. A challenge for another visit. Big Church sticking up.Down to the ferry port that I’ll be using next time.Maybe my stumbling so much is just down to the surface. Tis a bitch, and it’s dryish.Little sea arch not long for this world I think, big crack at the bottom.Someone, a few hundred, or even a thousand years ago has a quiet day and decides to build an arch in the middle of a field? Any wonder people are chucking stones at them.Guess who lives here in the very big hole? A giant bee keeping, golf playing, lady giant.Paradise bay. Looks like they have had some fresh cliff falls as well.Then you realise you are walking on the bit that is breaking away. With very fresh breaks.You’re just ambling along the cliff path and you come to these things. I quickly jump to the landward side, thinking that my 100Kg is going to be the last straw and tumble thousands of tons of cliff face into the bay. The thing is; these cracks all happened after the hurricane.Yep. The big cracks in the rock sort of pointed that way.Used to be the Governor’s gaff back in the day.Comino across the way.The pretend rock looks very good but the sea makes short work of it.As I said guide is 10 years out of date. I’m wandering along a path that ends up in this spooky abandoned hotel, somehow inside their fence – trapped.The swimming pools filled with rain water. It must have just closed – not much growth or rubish around.Found a narrow gap in a wall and squeezed through – free at last, free at last.I wonder what they are gaurding? Ramla tal-Qortin, nice cove with loads of small summer houses.Reminds me of a town used in a western movie. Just waiting for the tumble weeds to roll along.V.M. in her full colour aspect. Patron saint of gunslingers.They are all over. Abandoned hotels and half finished builds. This one is right on the beach.Next but one bay, next tower. White tower bay. Loads more little houses. Their V.M. was jealous of her neighbour’s snazzy blue cloak so the peeps gave her a halo instead.This one has had loads of add-ons. A Tower plus.This is supposed to be a Coral Beach. Perhaps have to wait for the tide to recede a little. Not that they have much in the way of tides.Chapel of Immaculate Conception. On my way down here, I was approached by a woman – French – who stepped off the garrigue and said, ‘Heet.’ I, slightly taken aback, mimed hitting myself in the chops, ‘Hit?’ She shook her head just as I got it, ‘Ah! Eat,’ and mimed putting food in my gob. She nodded enthusiastically. I didn’t jump in with my poor French the other day but now ventured, ‘Le café et fermi,’ pointing back down the way we had come. Then pointing at the bays reaching back from there, ‘Et la, et la aussi. L’hotel fermi. Cinq kilometres du café ouvert.’ Then turned around and pointed in the direction I was going for a few, ‘Deux kilometres, a la droit beaucoup café.’ She thanked me profusely and her and her man tramped away. I gave them a two hundred metre start wondering why I was so attractive to French women all of a sudden.This V. Mary, the Lady of the Light, is not long for it. Soon it will be the dark, dark depths. Ah! It is because I have no rucksack! They think me a local. I only knew about the cafes ‘cos I’m going around in a sort of circle. They turned right to their welcome lunch while while I turned left to the last headland.My goal at last, Ghadira at the end of Mellieha bay. But, as always, it is much further than it seems.The fisher folk below me. It is strange how clearly their voices are up here.Looking back to the church. Looks like these cliffs have taken a pounding.Secret submarine pens. They are all out hunting down the German navy ships landing the troops in the south.The big church with the red dome across the bay.The guide says there is a gap at the end of the bastion wall and a path that goes up to the road, the further way being blocked by the grounds of a hotel. But, it’s all gone. A big bite out of the cliffs has taken the path et al.I make it round the wall and I’m near the end. The red tower from the other side.By far the creepiest V.M. I’ve seen. This one was preying, vampire like, on the drunk-to-a-stupor tourists – especially those in football shirts – and needed to be sealed in her niche forever.The massive abandoned hotel that was meant to block the path.Back at my roundabout and time for a bus back to the gaff – still no 0% I bet.
