Towns and Villages of Malta and car rentals at Luqa Airport

The towns and villages of Malta can be easily explored by hire car from Luqa Airport. If you pre-book car rental at Malta International Airport you can save time and money when you arrive.

Xaghra, north west of Ggan¬tija, was inhabited in prehis¬toric times. It's a pleasant town with an exuberantly decorated, baroque 19thcentury church. Signs point to Xerri's Cave and Ninu's Cave, which you can visit if you would like to see odd shaped stalactites and sta¬lagmites. At the northeast corner of the Xaghra plateau, with its superb view over to Ramla Bay on the right, you come to Calypso's Cave, where Ulys¬ses, apart from the view, as the narrow stairs lead to a singularly supposedly dallied the fair siren. One wonders what either Calypso or Ulysses saw in this unimpressive and murky hole.

Ramla Bay Gozo

Ramla Bay itself is Gozo's biggest golden sand beach. It has a simple bar in summer, and plenty of space to sun yourself, despite its popularity. North-west of Ramla, Ghajn Barrani is accessible only by a primitive road which stops at the head of a cliff. After this you have to scramble down: the setting is lovely, however, and the rocks flat and perfect for sunbathing.

Just off the main road from Victoria to Mgarr, Xewkija is a rather plain town with an amazing church begun in 1951 and completed 30 years later. Built to a classical design in golden globigerina limestone, it is a typical Gozitan accom¬plishment, realized by sheer labour and the devotion of the town's 3,500 citizens. Here the dome rivals Malta's at Mosta as one of the largest in the world. The parishioners want¬ed the church so badly that they built it right over the old one, only removing the first when the new building could be used.

Xlendi Malta

Some of its features are preserved in a sidechapel. Xlendi is reached by a small road leading south west from Victoria. It is a lovely natural site, well worth the 3km (2mile) trip from the island capital, though it can be crowded. On the way, you'll see hilly pastoral scenery and, on the left, a massive wash¬house from the knights' time, adorned with the arms of the Order. X1endi stands at the sea¬ward end of a long and beauti¬fully terraced wied, or valley.

The pastel houses of the town are tucked away at the head of a narrow bay protected by two tall rocky promonto¬ries. High on the southern side there's a great growth of apart¬ments, but the shore is a fav¬ourite spot for swimming. The cliffs opposite are for walkers: follow the main path to its end, through a natural rock garden dotted with wild flowers in winter and spring, and you'll come to an old rockcut boat¬house. With hotels, cafes and restaurants, Xlendi enjoys its status as a favourite excursion haunt, where little shops sell lace, knitwear and other local products.

An adjacent road out of Victoria leads to Sannat, a tiny town well-known for its lace statue of Christ. Once a quiet fishing harbour, Marsalforn has become a popular holiday centre for its opportunities for diving, sailing, and swimming off the short, sandy beaches and inviting rock ledges.

Zebbug Malta

Walk or drive west along the coastal tracks to see strange sculpted saltpans, or head in¬land through rugged country to Zebbug, which has a tradi¬tional church and good views. (You can also take the wider road there from Victoria.) Ask anybody hereabouts for the house of Sebastian Axiak, a local farmer who turned his hand to sculpting and made a big diorama. He died years ago, but the family is happy to display his cre¬ation, a charming potpourri of Christian lore, village scenes and bell-towers from all over the world.

West of Victoria is Gozo's least populated and, some say, prettiest area. The latest part to have been settled, it was once known as the 'desert'. Hikers should aim for one of Gozo's less visited beauty spots the gorge of Wied el Ghasri ¬where it meets the sea.

On a side road between Ghammar and Gharb is a vast neo-Romanesque church, Ta' Pinu, built between 1920-36. The main attraction of this in¬congruous affair is the miracles connected with it. This was the site of a somewhat rundown chapel (built 1534), which had been cared for by a pious man called Gauci, nicknamed Pinu. On 22 June 1883, a peasant woman, Carmela Grima, heard a mysterious voice urging her to say three aves.

She heard a similar voice several times, and a friend of hers, Francesco Portelli, admitted he had heard voices too. The two prayed for his desperately ill mother, who recovered miraculously, and from then on the miracles mul¬tiplied. Ta' Pinu is still a shrine and place of pilgrimage.

A path opposite is lined with marble statues depicting the Stations of the Cross.Nearby, just outside Gharb, a little museum houses small objects and dioramas made by the pious Portelli and Carmela Grima. To see them, ask the priest at Ta' Pinu, who can arrange to open the museum. Gharb (Arabic for 'west') is the perfect peaceful Gozitan village, with a lovely baroque church on its main square, pas¬tel house fronts, a tiny village shop and little else to do but watch the women making lace.

The square is decorated with coloured pillars and lights at festa time in early July. Just south of Gharb, take footed small road through San id Lawrenz down to Dwejra for some spectacular sightseeing and bathing. As you descend you'll see a big outcrop in the water which almost entirely blocks the entrance to Qawra Bay. Named General's Rock, it's more often called Fungus Rock after a plant found there and prized by the knights for its curative powers.

Qawra Tower Malta and cheap airport car hire

The bay below is domin¬ated by Qawra Tower, which can be reached by cheap airport car hire from Luqa, and was built in 1651. The road ends near a chapel and an extraordinary rock promontory, where you can walk across a natural arch over the sea. Down a track to the right is the Inland Sea, a grandiose name for a saltwater lagoon linked by a natural tun¬nel to the sea. When it's calm, you can swim through in about

Places to go in Gozo and Fungus Rock

The plant growing on fungus Rock which the knights so valued is not actually a fungus at all, but a parasitic species called Cynomorium coccineum. Drawing nourishment from the roots of other plants, it pushes up orangered, leafless spikes. The knights discovered it had haemostatic properties (controlling the flow of blood and was useful in treating intestinal disor¬ders, a skill for which Malta was notorious almost until modern times.

The stuff was thought so precious that anyone found even attempting to raid the rock could be sentenced to death or a fate scarcely less dire the galleys. 10 minutes. Some boathouses are open in summer as snack bars or little shops. Fastgrowing Nadur, 5krn (3 miles) east of Victoria, is the second largest town in Gozo, and the richest. The people are proud of their church, built by G Bonnici in the 18th century, restored in the 19th, and elabo¬rately decorated. The town is at quite an altitude for Gozo ¬over 150m (500ft) above sea level (the name Nadur means 'summit' in Arabic).

For isolated rock bathing in a pretty setting, you can take a narrow road north of Nadur, then walk down past orange groves sheltered by bamboo fences to San Bias.Another branch of the same road from Nadur takes you to the charm¬ing, small fishing harbour of Dahlet Qorrot, where boat¬houses are carved out of the cliffs. Qala is a country town, its windmill is the last one working in Gozo. Further on are quarries which supplied the stone for the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool.

As in Malta, almost every¬thing is an excursion on Gozo. It's worth hiring a boat for a trip round Gozo and Comino. There are lovely bays, soaring cliffs, and Comino's popular lagoon where you can swim in limpid turquoise waters.