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James

Hi everyone, it was somewhere in mid February, it was Carnival weekend here on the Maltese islands. I enjoy carnival quite a lot and it is celebrated in a particular way at Nadur in Gozo. Ii is a spontaneous carnival with lots of surprises and one can never guess what to expect while roaming in the roads of Nadur. These are some characters of this year’s carnival- Feb 2005.
Before celebrating carnival in the evening we organized quite a good walk in the morning. I must admit that this walk was one of the most satisfying. At this time of the year we had had some rainy days so all the fields and surroundings where of incredible greenery and flourishing at their winter best.
We left Malta early morning and started the walk at first light.  So we started from the road under the old fortified city of Citadella. Half way through the sloping road we cut trough a passage in the fields moved almost parallel to the Marsalforn road heading to the right of the il-Harrax point. Here I was surprised with the amount of flowers and grass one could see around him. I had completely forgot when was the last time I saw big bunches of a typical white flower called Narcis.
We continue on these slopes round the  ta Kuljat hill till we reached a small road in Wied il- Qlejgha underneath the village of Zebbug.  From here we moved round the Dabrani hill heading for the Salvatur point. This is a hill on which at the top there is situated a big statue of Jesus Christ visible from various points around the island. As one can observe, the island of Gozo is made up of many hills and valleys, of which some of them are big enough to have entire villages built on them.
Back from Salvatur hill we crossed the Marsalforn road to a very steep hill reaching the furthest end of the Xaghara village.  From here we crossed part of Wied il pergola and we found yet another breath taking views of what this island had to offer. These slopes leading to beneath the Cliffs of Xaghara moving to the Ramla bay where extremely nice to walk into (and sometimes quite challenging as they quite a good gradient)

From sea level at Ramla Bay (limits of Nadur) we had yet another steep hill to go up to the periphery of Nadur village.  From here it was quite plane sailing moving through the village of Nadur. Here preparations were being made for the carnival celebrations following.  From Nadur we conclude the walk by walking downhill to Mgarr harbour through the Wied Biljun near Ghajnsielem village. 
In all the walk which was approximately 21 km long took us some seven hours of which one  hour was stoppages.