Weve had a few days of relaxation, so now its time for some exercise. We get on the bus (yes I know thats not exercise) and head off towards St Thomas Bay a couple of kilometres south of Marsascala, where we plan to hike the Munxar Path.
There are some sandy beaches on the bay, one of which seem to be well populated with British youngsters. If their pale skin is anything to go by I think they might here straight from the airport. Im not sure why, but in our experience British beachgoers seem to have a strange aversion to hats, tee shirts and sunscreen. I think you can probably be allergic to sunscreen, but an entire nation? ... and anyway that wouldnt explain the hats and tee shirts thing. Its virtually cloudless and very hot, and I suspect this lot will probably look like lobsters when back past here in a few hours time.
It looks like the south side of the bay might be where a lot of the locals have their weekend beach shacks. This seems to be quite a thing in Malta. to us a few days ago
about Maltese having summer houses in St Pauls Bay, well at least they did until tourism landed there and priced them out of the market. Some of the more well heeled back home have beach houses, but these are usually a few hours drive from where they live during the week, so Im struggling a bit with the concept of someone owning a regular house and a weekend house, both on the same ten kilometre wide island. I suppose at least between the two would be less of a hassle. Most of the shacks here on St Thomas Bay look a bit ramshackle, and are lined up together in a row across the road from the beach. There are exceptions. We pass one lonely looking box on the clifftop with spectacular views out over the turquoise water below. It looks ridiculously cute with flowers in planter boxes on the front porch and some storks of something that looks like corn growing in a small bed just in front of it.
The Munxar Path is a rocky track that leads us along the clifftop on the south side of the bay. We pass signs telling us to keep
off the land on the inland side of the track. It looks like some of the landowners might be trying to grow things here, but it must be a bit of a struggle when the soil looks to be more stones than anything else. Cant blame them for trying I guess.
The white limestone cliffs get progressively higher and more spectacular. They look very fragile, and its a bit hard not to notice the occasional large cave where it looks like part of the cliff face has collapsed. One large example is sitting just below the top of one of the higher faces, and above that well someones decided this would be a good place to put a giant crane that theyre using on a construction project. I hope whoever it was knows about the cave.
Were careful not to get too close to the clifftop as it does look like it could crumble away at any second and take us with it a hundred metres or so onto the rocks below. Issy says we should hold onto each other so if the edge does suddenly give way at least we can go out together. We cant
help but reflect that if this was Australia thered be warning signs everywhere, and fences stopping you getting anywhere near the clifftop. Im not quite sure whats happened back home to the idea of people being at least partly responsible for their own safety.
Weve heard that theres a fireworks factory out here somewhere. There seems to a bit of an obsession with fireworks in Malta. It seems that almost every church on the island holds its own annual feast, and were here in the middle of feast season. There are apparently more churches per head of population here than almost anywhere else on the planet, so that means lots of feasts. Most involve fireworks, and most of the fireworks are handmade. Weve heard quite a few stories of people getting limbs blown off when things dont go quite to plan during the manufacturing process, so putting a factory out here in the middle of empty paddocks would seem like a very sensible strategy.
