Tag Archives: St Julian’s Malta

The weather this morning was verging on disappointing.  An early blue sky and sunshine on the terrace was quickly replaced by grey clouds and the threat of a shower or two, or three.  Thankfully after breakfast a keen wind quickly moved the clouds across the sky at skidding speed and the rain showers passed swiftly by.

Our plan was to walk north along the coast to the nearby village of St Julian’s and depending upon the weather maybe  even further, if things turned out badly then we could always get a bus back to Sliema.

I don.t know this for sure but the east coast of Malta used to be a string of villages with green space between them but rapid commercial and tourist development has morphed them into one long homogeneous strip of continuous concrete and tarmac.

I admit that I have a tendency to lament the passing of time, to be gloomy about the loss of the past.  The loss of heritage.  On this walk I found myself weighed down by nostalgia and despondency in equal measures. Maybe I should try harder to welcome the change, embrace the present and look forward to the future.  I should use full beam going forward rather than the rear view mirror. I need to add a dash of hope to my cocktail.  The historian in me makes this difficult.

St Julian’s in the 1960s…

… and almost all of this gone, swept away in a frenzy of hasty development and here in the east much of the previous charm of Malta has been hollowed out and now there is high rise where once there were traditional homes, Starbucks where there were corner bars, McDonalds where there were tavernas.  Malta has the fastest growing economy in Europe and it shows and there is a swift, maybe reckless transition from the old to the new and the development demonstrates impatient haste.

This what St Julian’s looks like now…

We persevered with our walk and thought that we might make the next stage down to St George’s but the route was rather depressing along a road of cheap tourist shops and uninviting cafés and bars, it was starting to rain, Kim was suffering with the beginnings of a cold so we agreed to turn around and go back to Sliema.

Kim suggested catching a bus, we found the stop but there was no one there waiting and no sign of a bus so I alternatively suggested walking to the next stop.

This is a cunning diversionary tactic that I picked up from my Dad about sixty years ago.  Every other week we go to watch a Leicester City football match at Filbert Street.  I can recall quite clearly going to the matches in my blue and white hand knitted scarf and bobble hat because this always involved a long walk of about three miles there and three miles back. 

Dad used to leave his car at my grandparents house and very nearby there was a convenient  bus stop with a direct service into the city which passed close by the football ground but he rather cunningly always started out for the match at a time that was certain not to coincide with the timetable.  I never caught on to this little trick at the time of course and he had a very brisk walking pace that required me to run along side him just to keep up as he strode out ahead and always enquiring “where’s the bus? where’s the bus?”  I swear that he had eyes in the back of his head or rear view mirrors because if there was ever a danger of one turning up Dad would use the diversionary tactic of stopping to tighten his shoe laces or check for his wallet or something similar to ensure that we missed it. 

It turns out that dad just didn’t like paying bus fares which he considered to be an unnecessary expense.

This was a Leicester City 1960’s bus, a rather curious custard colour…

This is a Malta bus from my visit in 1994, a very vivid custard colour…

Read my post about Malta buses here…

Anyway, the weather improved, the clouds scattered and blue skies returned and by my devious planning finding ourselves forever stranded between stops  we missed every bus that passed and walked all the way and then found a bar for a well earned sojourn.

If I had pulled a fast one on the bus trick, Kim got her own back in the afternoon in spectacular fashion. As the weather improved and medication kicked in we walked in the opposite direction in what I thought was a way around the headland and back to the port but our way was barred by a shopping centre, a four story pit of retail hell which had to be negotiated before we could return to some sort of  sanity.

Once through it and into the welcome open air it started to rain again so we beat a hasty retreat back to our apartment,  I had a lie down.  Later we dined in the same restaurant for the fourth successive evening.  Once we have found somewhere we like we agree that it is not worth chancing anywhere else which may disappoint.

Our last night in Sliema, the next day we would be moving on to the fishing port of Marsaxlokk in the south of the island.