It's coming up, it's coming up, it's DARE

I'm just back from Malta.

It was brilliant. I've never been anywhere with so much sense of history, not even Italy, Scotland or even India. You pretty much fall over the history everywhere you go, concentrated on three main periods:

1) The Prehistoric temples - the earliest, at Ggantija on Gozo, was supposedly built in 3600 BC
2) The Great Siege by the Turks in 1565 - 30,000 Turks were killed by the Knights
3) The Second World War - 5000+ air-raids on Malta by the Axis from 1940-1943

Malta is like a small, very dry and dusty version of 1950s Britain with a suntan. There are even red post boxes and British cars. Most of the tourists are also Brits. Egg and chips, pale ale, pubs - it's all there. They even refer to the local currency as 'the pound', even though it's really the Maltese lira (LM).

The island is about 30% urbanised, and is dotted with huge churches that dominate the skyline. Small stone walls split up the dusty brown fields. The sea is bright blue and though there are not many beaches, there are a number of amazing natural habours, notably the grand harbour between the capital, Valletta, and the '3 cities'. This harbour is where the fortifications, both renaissance and modern, are concentrated.

More to come...