Touring Malta

rgstocker

Anyone taken a bike to Malta? A few of us are considering taking the Bromptons to Malta (and perhaps Gozo) for a few days pedaling arounf the islands - thought the Bromptons might be safer than full size bikes on the plane. Have already made contact with a guy who has written a booklet of 12 rides but any other info would be useful.

2 of us rode from Carcassonne to Montpellier via the Canal du Midi last year (in November) and Malta sounded auite nice (an maybe warm).

Tourist Tony

A group of us went to Malta earlier this year. Where to start......Heathrow. Shower of excrement. On departure, they failed to load the bikes. On return, we watched as the bikes (in CTC clear bags) were thrown from the plane, and then had heavy cases thrown on top of them. I am still trying to resolve the complaint.
We stayed in St Paul's Bay, North of Mosta, in an apartment run by a dive school, and did quite a bit of riding including a Friday Night Ride to the Coast.
The island is limestone, and very hilly. Not great towering summits, but some very, very steep scarp slopes that cross the island as ridges. One of the favourite bits was the return down from Mosta, a brain-out plummet on smooth tarmac after a hairpin bend. The road before that hairpin is more typical, being very rough and broken, like most road surfaces there. I would suggest a strong wheel set rather than a full-on road bike.
The drivers are insane by most standards, and there appear to be more cars than people. The buses at the moment are real antiques, thundering along in a swish of chrome and diesel fumes. That said, we found almost all drivers to be careful around bikes, and on our 40 mph descents back from Mosta we were treated very much as "traffic".
There is a lot to see, and I would push Mosta, Mdina/Rabat and Valletta as lovely places.
The beer is cheap and very British, and the people must be among the most open and hospitable on the planet. I wouldn't really go back with a bike, as the island is very small, but the whole mood of the island is great.
Pity about their attitude to birds.