Malta (Northern Region) – A Little Walk

I was pleased with myself on arriving into Malta, getting on the right bus and realising the bus stop was right by my hotel. Then I realised that I was two hours before the check-in time, so I stayed on the bus and thought I’d walk back. A bit of exploration is good for the soul.

Anyway, whilst walking back down the side of a busy road with no pavement I started to regret this stupidity. But, things got better quickly, and I arrived back on the road that was marked on Google Maps. The road seemed to be quite a sizeable path and it ended up at the back of my hotel, so I went for that plan.

After about 100 metres the lovely road turned into some rough and shoddy path. Although, intriguingly, it was unlike any path I’ve followed as some of it was built into the rock. And parts of it were very smooth, something that could only be achieved by centuries of people walking over it. At this stage, I wasn’t aware that I was walking along what was a Roman road and pilgrim’s route.

And then the history started to unfold, the ruts along the Roman road, an ancient village, dry stone walls, standing stones, a Neolithic temple, a Punic tomb, a troglodyte cave, a Roman apiary, a pill-box, a medieval farmhouse and numerous other ancient structures. Which means that for a simple walk I have an enormous number of photos which are out of all proportion to the three miles I walked.

There’s an episode of Time Team which was filmed at Llygadwy, which transpired to be a salted site. There was so much history within such a small space that it didn’t make sense, and Time Team uncovered an archaeological fraud. But here, the history is all authentic and it combined to be one of the most history packed walks that I’ve ever gone on.

Below are photos of the walk before the history began (or, more accurately, before I realised it began), as I’ll post separately about those highlights….