Pretty Bay?

Yesterday began with breakfast and coffee, the second on the balcony. There was nothing to disturb the stunning vista apart from thoughts regarding how on earth the dinghy sailors were going anywhere. A slight but infrequent zephyr was hardly likely to facilitate much in the way of progress and they were a little too far off the ferry track for it's wash to rock their boats. After a while a RIB took pity and towed them in. 

Not a good day for sailing. The risk of sunstroke must have been very high.

It was about now that a couple of communications arrived from home, one letting us know that it was 6°C, the other "almost 7" but both were agreed that it was raining, had been raining and was forecast to continue raining.

We caught the bus to Birzebbuga with a plan to walk the coast "path" to Marsaxlokk. We got off at Pretty Bay, which it is. To a point. It felt very north African, I guess, a bit Cassablanca but in colour.

The beach is of very fine sand and the water not cold to the point it would put you off a dip. Indeed, there were swimmers in evidence, alas, my cossie was in a drawer 10k NW. Paddling was good though. It was a very interesting paddling spot as looking over my right shoulder from where this photo was taken reveals:

That is Malta Freeport and is why Pretty Bay is in reality not a bay at all because the southern arm of it has been removed to make way for the container terminal. Now, I happen to find this view very interesting and pretty too, in it's way but I accept that not everone does. It does explain why Pretty Bay and St.Gorg's Bay (the next one) have not succumbed to high rise touristicity like so many of the pretty places on the island and throughout the Mediterannean, probably.

Salt of the earth.

What even I would struggle with though, is the constant drone of electric motors and generators which is exceedingly annoying after a while. It is constant, unlike road traffic, it is monotonous and it is not at all pleasant.

St.Georg's Bay passed with a delightful pause for a chat with an elderly gentleman sat in small boat, I'd call it a tosher. He was changing the filters on a single cyllinder Volvo Penta which I recognised, after all it is as old as I and quite common in all sorts of small boats of a certain age. We had a lovely yarn and one of us found a seat a little further along to rest a while.

On the almost unnoticed headland betwixt the bays is Malta's oldest oil storage depot and a rather ugly sculpture, in my opinion, although probably appropriate in it's heft, it's rust and it's opacity to convey a message, even one with such long forgotten but huge significance. I suspect that Jonathan Meades would classify it as "Brutalism" in which case I'd consider that totally appropriate.

Here ended the Cold War. I do remember the event. Vaguely. I had no idea it took place here, though. In fact one of my reasons for wanting to come here was that this was the place where east met west in May of 1565 for here it was that Sulieman The Great's son in law, Pasha who had foolishly been placed in command of the navy with the order not to lose it first anchored as a prelude to The Great Siege of that summer. It was from here that it re-embarked the remains of the failed army in September.

Marsaxmett, over which our balcony looks was deemed too close to Fort St.Elmo for safety but once the seige was underway it was used by the fleet of Dragut, the Corsair to put ashore its guns just around the corner from where I type. He was killed before St.Elmo fell and his fleet escaped, or what was left of it.

I saw nothing to commemorate the earlier east west confrontation and somehow, this brutal, rusty, iron object surrounding a column of local stone engraved with a note of it's relevance outside the oldest oil terminal in the island on a barely noticeable headland between two less than picturesque bays is somewhat appropriate.

Walk on, as that BBC2 dogwalker lady liked to say and as you leave St.Gorg's bay. Another low rise plain seafront with much dilapidation in evidence, broken windows and empty doorframes through which to take photographs of container gantries, ships and a fishfarm. I rather like it to be honest.

As the bay is left behind you pass a fortified emplacement with a rarely seen sea moat, then another large oil storage facility with pipes extending undersea to a tanker moored outside the fishfarm. Then upwards and around the headand under the looming presence of yet another massive fort now covered in aerials and spotted with a multitude of microwave dishes. Fort San Lucian, built after the horse had bolted to deter his return.

It says something when you can pass such constructions, beautifully proportioned, massively effective, the height of military technology in their day which now struggles to elicit a second glance, perhaps a shrug of the shoulders as you pass by.

Maybe because before you lies this:

 Marsaxlokk from the southern headland of it's bay. Captivating. The tingle of excitement that ahead lies some proper prettiness and The Rising Sun for a late lunch taken under a much needed sunshade.

We sat next to a bus driver who admitted responsibility for having played his part in bringing the contents of a cruise liner here for lunch. Fortunately, he deposited them over in the vicinity of the expensive seats more in tune with their expectations. "Another half hour and they'll be gone," he told us with the authority of one who knew.

He did tell us that we should try octopus in Maraxlokk and rabbit at Lija just outside Mosta. We've been to neither of the latter and probably won't now.

A great day out, highly recommended. And hot, hot, hot although the bus driver described it only as "warm." Alas, our lingering hesitation in leaving Marsaxlokk after so late a lunch meant arriving in Valletta as the workers were departing.

The bus ride back from Valletta terminus was pretty awful and my shoulder still complains. It was helped, to a point, by the fact that arrival on the balcony was refreshed by cold pineapple juice as we have run out of everything else.