Joining the Malta Geographical Society for a walk

         This time I decided to take a walk from a different perspective, so my father and I joined the Malta Geographical Society for one of their weekly walks around the island. Today’s walk was around Buskett and Had-Dingli. 

            Everyone was welcome to join and we took the opportunity to renew our membership, having already joined some of their ramblings last year. We set off in the afternoon from Buskett Winery and walked towards the cliffs. 

           The huge majority were elderly, and this sadly made me realise how much the younger generation is missing out from! Of course there were some dogs too... 

Above: The Verdala Palace in the distance. This is the President's summer residence.

               Leaders led the way and guided the walk in a nice and leisurely manner with ample time to take photographs or have a sip of water along the way – something much approved of by members, especially my father who couldn’t walk too fast due to back injuries dating from last year (a slipped disc resulting from a hike taken last year with a different rambling group who rushed too much). 

                Once at Dingli we walked alongside the cliff and it was really windy so I only to happy to walk back inland after a while and back to the cart ruts. At times we walked along country lanes or in the open land and others we had to squeeze through bushes hiding secret paths I surely never would have discovered on my own! 

                For me, it was a lovely experience. To my surprise, we were a very big number of over 70 keen and friendly hikers, which encouraged me to go out of my comfort zone and do a bit of socializing. I made friends with a very nice girl and got to widen my knowledge about the historical sites around, such as l-Ghar il-Kbir and the cart ruts at Clapham Junction (no, not the train station 😌)

Above: Filfla island seen from the cliffs near Dingli

                Not only were the leaders and the elders eager to share information, everyone was so kind and helpful! Whenever we reached a tricky part some one would always wait and offer a hand to help us down, and when we were walking through an overgrown path with branches sticking out everywhere each person would carefully hold back that branch for the person behind her and so on. It was a community of people. 

                The walk appeared smoothly planned but the leaders explained how that very week they had to unexpectedly re-route the walk as they found  a mountain of rubble in the way! The quarry nearby had placed an enormous amount of limestone where the walk had intended to go. It’s not everyday that a flat path becomes a sand dune, I’ll be bound to say! Maybe even more surprisingly, it didn’t blow all away in all that wind...  

Above: Group photo!!