Fortress Malta

Valletta Harbour as viewed from the Upper Barrakka bastion, May 2024

Norwich is an airfield that I have personally piloted a light aircraft into*, so when I noticed that there were £13 tickets available from Norwich Airport to Malta International Airport - one of the few countries that I hadn't yet visited on my medium-term project to visit every European country - I was delighted to take the opportunity. 

Ryanair is well known for using its loss-leader ticket prices as bait to then gouge the customer elsewhere. The real marginal cost of filling a seat on an already-scheduled flight instead of leaving it empty is the sum of £13 Air Passenger Duty, ~£3 extra fuel to lift another passenger's mass into the air, ~£5 per passenger to use airport terminals, and another ~£10 in the cost of the risk of rebooking/accommodation/compensation if flights are delayed or cancelled. Each airline's marginal break-even ticket price is commercially sensitive, but if a flight ticket is less than ~£30 then the airline will generally be losing money compared to leaving the seat empty: it's not a coincidence that its rivals Easyjet and Wizz Air rarely price their tickets below £30. All three airlines' total costs divided by passengers carried is slightly less than £50 for their total break-even ticket price. 

The open top bus tour to celebrate Ipswich Town's promotion to the Premiership. 

I set off from my home in Ipswich on a rather special day: the local football team had just been promoted to the Premier League, and so the team was doing an open-top bus tour of the town. It was nice to see such pride in the town, especially as I was about to go to the local rival in the Old Farm Derby. My train ticket from Derby Road (Ipswich) station on a local line over to Norwich cost me £6.25, just booked the day before travel. As I commute to work every morning by bus, and get an apology voucher every time the bus is cancelled, I was then able to use one of them to then get between Norwich rail station and Norwich Airport. I was much more pleased with that than I should have been for the £2 saving. 

Gate 4 of 5 at Norwich Airport

Norwich Airport was tiny. Not quite as tiny as my personal record at Carcassonne but there were a total of five gates, one of which was just for oil-rig helicopters. Like many regional airports, they charge an extra £10 per passenger to get through the terminal, but Ryanair seemed to be exempt from this: a member of staff gave Ryanair passengers a receipt slip as if we'd paid it, on which it looked like the fee had been paid in bulk, but I suspect Ryanair will have negotiated an exemption rather than paying it for us. The security queue took just as long as at other airports though, seemingly as the next flight's passengers had turned up very early. It was interesting to observe that the median age of passengers at Norwich for two flights to Faro and Malta was about double the age of Stansted passengers. 

As the plane taxied over to the runway, it was fun to watch it taxiing around an airport that I had previously taxied around, recognising the various buildings around the technical site including the freezing portacabin where we did our radio exams, as well as the rest of the local area so familiar to me having flown around plenty by light aircraft. The rest of the flight over the Continent was uneventful; I kept costs down by bringing a packed inflight dinner that I suspect was much healthier and filling than what other passengers had paid about £10 for. 

Upon arrival at Malta International Airport, I went over to the bus stop for the local bus to Valletta. In the late evening, the X4 bus runs half-hourly direct to the main bus station and all the Malta Public Transport buses accept Visa contactless for payment. I then went for a short walk through the city centre to find the hostel where I was staying, walking through the main city gate through the fortifications - it's quite an entrance. 

Departing Valletta Harbour on the Gozo Express ferry

The next morning, I woke up just in time to take the ferry over to the isle of Gozo, Malta's second island. I hadn't yet explored the first, but the timing was ideal for a day-trip so I power-walked over to the ferry terminal and boarded the Gozo Express fast ferry just in time. 

Arrival at Mgarr Harbour, Gozo, with Ghajnsielem Parish Church on the hilltop

After disembarking at Gozo Ferry Terminal, I took the bus over to Victoria to visit the Citadel. It's been a defensive site since the Bronze Age, but started developing its current form in the medieval period when the population of the island moved within its walls seasonally for protection from Barbary pirates. 

Old town, Cittadella, Gozo

The part of the town formerly inhabited seasonally by the island's population retains its narrow alleys and medieval feel, though part has remained in ruins. It's quite a thought that in 1551, Barbary/Ottoman pirates besieged and defeated the castle's defenders and captured the island's entire population of 6000 into slavery. 

Nevertheless, the views, churches, cathedral and ramparts today are spectacular. 

Cittadella with its Cathedral of the Assumption, Gozo. 

Next, I returned to Victoria town centre to catch the bus over to the Ġgantija temples. Ġgantija form part of the Megalithic Temples of Malta, and are some of the earliest surviving buildings in the world. 

Ġgantija megalithic temples, with altars preserved inside

The neolithic temples date from 5500 BC and are particularly impressive when one considers that they were built before metal tools or even the wheel had yet been invented. The site museum also explains the history of the complex and the background of the ancient neolithic civilisations of Malta. 

Ta'Kola Windmill

While there, I also visited and ascended to the top of the Ta'Kola Windmill, dating back to the 1700s, with many fewer visitors despite only being a couple of hundred metres away from the temple museum. It shows all the machinery still all intact - all nicely mechanical. 

The windmill mechanism: the sails are connected through the horizontal wooden rod to the blue cogwheel, which then turns the vertical rod which is connected to the millstone: 

After a brief lunch, it was time to return to the main island. I took the bus back to the harbour at Mgarr, from which I rode the Gozo Express catamaran back to Valletta. 

Gozo Express fast catamaran, linking Gozo with Valletta in around 45 minutes. 

I arrived back in Valletta where I then visited St John's Co-Cathedral, built by the Order of St John in the 1570s. The frescoes on the inside are magnificently Baroque, with the aisles lined with chapels representing each of the langues of the Order of St John: divisions of the Order's members and lands, split by language. An audio-guide is included with the entry fee and describes each part of the cathedral in great detail. 

St John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta: relatively plain on the outside, high Baroque on the inside. 

I proceeded to go for a walk around the city centre of Valletta: the buildings really do reflect its reputation as an open-air museum. I particularly enjoyed the national library. 

National Library of Malta, built 1776. 

It was too late in the day to go inside, but I did visit the library the next morning: one can enter by presenting a passport, and the central reading room was very much the archetype of the really quiet library reference room. Very historic. 

Upper Barrakka Gardens, Valletta

I finished my second day at the Upper Barrakka Gardens, overlooking Valletta Harbour and with views of the other forts including Fort St Angelo which is now extraterritorial for the Order of Malta. 

After visiting the library and having some excellent local pastizzi for breakfast, my last day in the country was mainly spent exploring around Fort St Elmo: the most fortified part of this fort city, the centrepiece of its defence from Crusader days all the way to World War II. It's best known for its part in the 1565 Great Siege of Malta by the Ottoman navy, with the Knights of the Order of Malta holding out in the besieged fort for 28 days. Eventually the fort fell, but the siege bought enough time for Spanish and Italian reinforcements to arrive in Malta to defend the island and finally defeat the Turks. This was the last battle fought by the Crusader Knights in the defence of Christendom: the whole history of the Siege of Malta is a fascinating read in any case, but it was particularly interesting to be there in the fort where it happened. 

Fort St Elmo, the star fortress in the centre of shot, as viewed from the Gozo ferry the previous day

The whole fort is now a museum telling the whole history of Malta, with particular emphasis on the Order of St John that is so associated with the island. I particularly enjoyed an audio-visual guided tour of the tunnels underneath the fort, where a medieval knight, a Napoleonic-era soldier, and a World War II soldier together presented the fort's history through the last 500 years. 

The George Cross awarded to the island for its gallantry in World War II - undefeated despite ferocious assaults and an Axis blockade - is exhibited in the museum at Fort St Elmo. 

I spent a half-day at the fort - as a history nerd, it was a really fascinating place to explore. Finally though, after some more local pastries for lunch, it was time to head back to the airport: I took a local bus through the villages towards the airport for my flight back to the UK. 

 

The flight from Malta to Luton was straightforward, but I'd arrived just when e-passport gates all over the UK were failing and so took ages to pass through passport control. Thankfully, I still got through in time for my usual way of getting to and from Luton: the local bus 100 from Luton Airport to Hitchin, then the train via Cambridge back to Ipswich. It had been a fantastically enjoyable few days. 

 

Dates: Thursday 6th June 2024 - Saturday 8th June 2024

Total cost for the three days, door to door:  £138.45

*A couple of us did our aviation radio licence tests there with one of the airport's air traffic controllers, who invited us to fly in and visit the control tower once we had our full Private Pilot's Licences. A few months later, we did exactly that: it was fascinating to see the operations behind the scenes. They did also say that if we were to ever visit the US Air Force tower at RAF Lakenheath, we'd see just how much more modern equipment the USAF's money buys them**. 

**A bunch of us from the gliding club did actually visit Lakenheath about a year later, and saw that whereas Norwich was staffed by a total of 4 ATC staff, Lakenheath had about 20 and had equipment that really was decades ahead. Watching F-16s and F-35s take off right in front of us at full power was also so much better than any airshow; that's what $0.5 billion per plane and an operating cost of ~$40,000 per hour buys you. Bear those numbers in mind whenever anyone in government says that there's no money.