Marsaskala to Marsaxlokk Walk - Tuesday 24 October

We'd always intended to do the walk between Marsaskala and Marsaxlokk, as it looked to be a pleasant trip around the coast, and not too long. We'd done so much walking over the week in Malta that we wondered about simply taking the bus to Marsaxlokk and doing a short out and back loop, as well as retrieving my glasses which I'd left on the restaurant table there on Sunday. However on looking up the walk, it was touted as one of the best walks in Malta, so we decided to do the full trip.

Good decision. It really was an excellent walk. We began in Marsaskala, and after a few false starts, found ourselves heading along the coast. First item of interest was an area of little basins cut from the coastal platform and used for making salt from the seawater. They were sweet.

Salt-making basins, Marsaskala

The track then swung around another bay before cutting across a headland through farm fields with the ubiquitous stone walls of Malta. We immediately noticed dozens of little cages sat on stone blocks on the end of steel poles. In each cage, sheltered from the sun by another stone sat on top, was a small bird tweeting away. Very odd, but explained by the men sitting in little stone huts watching out intently. The huts were hides, and the birds were audible decoys designed to attract other birds to be shot. Why anyone bothers we can't imagine. The birds were smaller and slimmer than sparrows, and the time and expense to shoot, pluck and prepare a bird in no way could compensate for the teaspoon of meat you might potentially get. As we walked we made sure to wave to the hunters so we couldn't be mistaken for large sparrows. There must have been 30-40 hunters along about a 5 kilometre section of track, so a hunter every 150 metres. We did hear a number of shots!

Live decoy birds on posts!

Anyway, the track was lovely, passing through interesting land, with a scattering of towers and churches, and some lovely coastal views. Towards Marsaxlokk, we detoured to have a look at a lovely little cove - St Peter's Pool. We wished we'd brought our togs. It looked a fabulous spot to swim, and a number of others clearly thought so too as there were many in the water.

Lovely track

St Peter's Pool

Into Marsaxlokk and to our restaurant from Sunday. My glasses were duly recovered, and we ordered nearly the same as on Sunday, as it was so good. Our seafood platter arrived before our starters, so back it went and the starters were brought out 5-10 minutes later. Very nice, though not quite as well-prepared as last time. Then out came the platter. We checked that it was a fresh one - "yes the one brought out was for another table". Lies unfortunately. I'd been watching to see if anyone else got a platter and they didn't. The proof was in the eating - the food was not quite fully hot, and was a little dry and rubbery. Worst, the mussels were stone cold. We called a waiter over and said what we thought had happened. After a little while the front of house woman came over and asked if we'd like a replacement, but we had lost interest by then and said no. No word of denial, or apology, though we are certain our plate was the old original. At least it wasn't on the bill when we paid up, though we wouldn't have paid for it anyway. A dumb thing to try by the restaurant. There's no chance a 15-minute-old plate of seafood will ever taste freshly made. They lost themselves some money, and a good review. A little disappointing, but we will happily savour the memory of Sunday's excellent version.

Back to Valletta on the bus, and a quiet evening. We went out again later to have a cup of gelato for dessert. It was expensive, but so worth it!

I think we are both happy to leave. We've seen everything we'd hoped to see, enjoyed all of it, learnt an enormous amount ad had a thoroughly good time. With another 3 or 4 days we could have visited Gozo island, but we don't feel that we needed to. Malata has been great. Never have we been somewhere so visibly steeped in history.

It's another big tick for living in Ceret that we can scoot round Europe on Ryanair from Girona at absurdly low prices. As I write this, we can get to Pisa for 9E, Romania for 10E, and Frankfurt for 16E, all RETURN! Try that from Nelson!

We did most of our packing in the evening, enlivened by Karen picking up a rug to give it a shake and finding a live scorpion had been right beside her hand. Apparently Maltese scorpions are not regarded as very dangerous!