Malta: Ta’ Dmejrek (1/28)

This blog post marks the start of our trip to Europe; where we are attempting to climb the highest peak in each of the 28 EU countries. We’ll mostly be travelling in our newly, self-converted VW van; with the exception of Cyprus & Malta.

When I realised we had a whole two week gap between returning from Tennessee and getting the ferry to Ireland I starting investigating whether it would be possible to squeeze a peak into the gap.

I soon discovered that you can get very cheap flights from Exeter to Malta. Two of our friends; Pat and Rich joined us as the dates conveniently matched up with their shift work. Even more conveniently Pat works at Exeter airport so gets free parking and a discounted rate into the executive lounge where we ate as many free Babybells as possible. 

We arrived late into Malta, collected our hire car and headed to the Airbnb, Rich was already there as he had been doing a free-diving course for the previous couple of days.

Bright and early we headed out for the main aim of the day which was to climb the highest peak in Malta. This is located on west side of the island on Dingli Cliffs. The peak is more of a plateau and it was actually quite difficult to find the exact highest point. So make sure we covered it we wondered across the plateau and had summit pictures on top of the spoil heap which looked the highest as well as another location that Open Street Map had recorded as the highest. All within 100m of the car.

This peak is a startling 253m in elevation and is the second lowest of the 28 summits, beating Denmark by an extra 82m. With the main aim of the holiday achieved by 11am we had plenty of time to explore the rest of the island. We first headed to the old capital Mdina which is a silent city. It is named so as only a few residential cars are allowed within the fortifications. We had a wonder around the pretty streets and admired the view.

After some lunch we headed to the Blue Grotto, we eventually decided to go on the boat ride even though the weather was a little rainy. We glad we did as the caves were very cool and the skipper had some expert skills not to crash us into the rocks. I bet this looks spectacular in the sunshine. We timed this perfectly as just as we got off the boat the heavens opened. Perfect time for a beer we thought, unfortunately it was Mother’s Day and all the bars and restaurants were fully booked at 3pm. Instead we trudged back uphill to the car and headed to the show cave near to the house.

We were pretty disappointed that we had paid five euros entry when we realised you can only go in the first 30 meters of the cave due to the presence of a rare cave adapted woodlouse. Nothing to do with the Acrow props just behind the woodlouse sign...

The show cave redeemed itself as the museum had the most extensive collection of dwarf hippopotamus toe bones I have ever seen, all neatly ordered in rows. It must have been pretty cool to have been on Malta in the Pleistocene frolicking amongst the dwarf elephant, hippos and deer, whilst running away from the giant turtles and shrews. The larger animals colonised the island and then were cut off, and began to evolve dwarf forms, over subsequent generations, as an adaptation to the resource poor environment.

We headed back to our Airbnb and went to try and find a nice pizza restaurant in nearby Pretty Bay. Pretty Bay is kind of pretty in its own way as there is a beautiful, golden sand beach; but also a dock for huge cargo ships. Unfortunately everyone seemed to be still taking their mum’s out for dinner and we ended up having pizza in what looked like a kebab shop, which actually turned out to be very good.

The Airbnb had a Malta guide book and we noticed a cool picture on the back of a collapsed sea cave. This wasn’t actually mentioned in the book, but a bit of Google image searching discovered that this was “Coral Lagoon”. So the next morning on the way to Gozo (a small island off Malta) we went to investigate.

First however we went to the Popeye village look out point. This village was built for the film set of the 1980 musical production ‘Popeye’ but has become a theme park style tourist attraction. We were just in time to catch the end of the 10:30 dance routine. This was quite surreal and the music was extremely catchy, we attempted to join in and Pat made some comments about the lack lustre press ups that Popeye was doing. 

Entertained we headed to the Coral Lagoon. This a collapsed sea cave, where you can jump off the cliff into the lagoon and swim out of a tunnel connecting to the sea. Unfortunately it was a bit chilly and too rough to actually climb out again. 

We got into the queue for the ferry and headed over to Gozo. First stop was the Blue Lagoon, situated next to the Inland Sea and formerly the Azure Window, which sadly no longer exists. Again it was too rough to get into the sea but it was impressive to watch the waves ricochet in though the archway.

We then headed to Żebbuġ for a lovely beach-front lunch, although we had to sit back from the terrace which had the occasional wave washing over it. We then drove along the coast and saw some interesting salt pans, carved into the soft limestone cliffs.

We next headed to the citadel in Victoria, this was amazing to look around, and the history was fascinating. In 1551 an Ottoman fleet initially landed on Malta, on realising that three of the cities were too well fortified to be conquered easily the Ottoman decided to attack nearby Gozo. 6,000 people were taken captive and ended up in slavery with only 300 people on the whole island escaping by climbing down the citadel walls and hiding. Gozo was slowly repopulated from Malta but it took 150 years for the population to reach pre-1551 numbers.

After this dose of history we decided visit one more bay before getting the ferry back. Here at Mġarr ix-Xini it was finally sheltered enough for swimming, although only Olly (who was actually the only one not to bring swimming trunks) got in the sea.

So a jam packed two days was over and we had an unsociably early flight back to Exeter. 

UK: Ben Nevis (2/28)

With the van serviced, packed, and with a new shelf and cupboard door; we left for Scotland.

We drove for for most of the day before parking up overnight just outside of Glen Coe.

The next day we had tickets booked in the afternoon for the Fort William to Mallaig steam train, which Anya had bought me as a birthday present (the one before last, we were just getting round to using it!). 

We set off in the early afternoon and spent a couple of hours admiring outstanding views of lochs and the mountains rising next to them. After crossing the Glenfinnan viaduct we arrived into the station, and after a short break where we had a brief look around the museum, we set off again for Mallaig.

In Mallaig we took a short, circular walk overlooking the harbour, stopping for a bit of lunch, before reversing the journey and arriving back in Fort William.

The next day, the first view from the van was of bright blue sky, but looking in the other direction towards ‘the Ben’ was a different story; mostly shrouded in cloud.

We decided to climb Ben Nevis along the Carn Mor Dearg Arete. Much more interesting than the standard tourist route, but also quiet; we only saw one other group on that route. The cloud would occasionally break, affording us spectacular views of the valleys below and the surrounding peaks.

Once we gained the summit the cloud had completely cleared and we had a 360 degree panorama from the top. In the number of times I’ve climbed Ben Nevis, this was the first I’ve ever had a view instead of grey fog and howling winds.

We continued down the Pony track, before branching off, back towards the North Face car park, gently downhill, across the moorland. Then due to our tight schedule we packed up, and left for Cairnyarn to catch our ferry to Ireland.

Ireland: Carrauntoohil (3/28)

After an early start on the ferry from Cairnryan (Scotland) to Larne (Northern Ireland) we started our scenic drive along the Causeway Coast route.

We had two days to explore Northern Ireland before heading to Dublin to meet up with our friend Matt, who has recently moved there. After a little research I worked out it would be best to visit the Giant’s Causeway after the visitor centre closed to avoid the crowds. So in the meantime we explored the coastline and visited a famous line of beech trees known as “The Dark Hedges”. These are quite pretty but really rose to fame after being featured in season 2, episode 1 of Game of Thrones. People really seem to have got “Throne’s fever” as we saw a couple on horse back being led through the trees in some particularly poor Game of Thrones costumes.

It was now late enough to head to the Giant’s Causeway. To avoid paying the extortionate £12 per person National Trust parking fee we parked 3 miles down the coast and had a pleasant evening walk along the headlands. We arrived just as the crowds began to stream back to the car park and managed to take a few photos and explore the geological phenomenon. 

The Giant’s Causeway is actually a 50-60 million year old basalt (lava) plateau which intruded into chalk. As the basalt cooled it contracted to form hexagonal fractures producing the 40,000 interlocking basalt columns. 

That evening we headed to Castlerock which I had read was a good place to park up for the night and were treated with a fantastic sunset before we turned in for the night.

In the morning the glorious weather continued and we went for a short walk to Downhill. Here a Bishop built Downhill house in 1775 and a little later commissioned the Mussenden Temple near the cliff edge which was his library. This is the fanciest cliff top library I have ever seen and I expect its and old version of a modern day man shed or Shepard’s hut. When it was built one could drive around it in a horse and carriage, however now it is teetering on the cliff edge and the National Trust has to keep a close eye on the cliff erosion. 

In the afternoon we headed to Derry, the extent of my Irish history knowledge is obtained from obsessively watching Michael Flatly productions as a child, so it is severely lacking. We visited the Museum of Free Derry which outlines the history leading up to and the events of Bloody Sunday. The museum was very good and I would recommend visiting it if you are in the area. 

We next headed south to meet Matt in Dublin, after some dinner we went out for a few drinks in some great pubs selected by Veronika, one of Matt’s new Dublin caving friends. We enjoyed a few pints of Guinness, which definitely does taste different in Ireland, over some traditional live Irish music. 

The following morning we headed to the South West which is where Ireland’s highest peak Carruntoonhil is located. We found a campground for two nights and had a delicious millennial-style BBQ of asparagus, Halloumi and smoked mackerel. We even got to use the hand made citronella candles which Thirza had given us. 

The next morning, with an OK weather forecast, we went to start our route. Instead of climbing the standard tourist route, “The Devil’s Staircase”—which is actually quite dangerous due to path erosion and falling rocks, we chose the Coomloughra Horseshoe Loop walk. This route also included four of the top five highest peaks in Ireland. We had a steep climb to the first peak Cnoc Lochtair (747m) by which we were already in low cloud. The temperature seemed to be at exactly the dew point and we all had a fine mist in our hair. The next peaks were Skregmore (848m) and Beenkeragh (1010m) before we had to traverse the Beenkeragh ridge to the Carrantoonhil summit (1039m) which involved some scrambling.

Here we suddenly had a gap in the mist and had the feeling of walking on top of the clouds as the ridge line hovered in the mist. We were even luckier as when we got to the summit the mist cleared long enough for us to enjoy the view in the sunshine whilst eating our lunch. 

We then continued to follow the ridge to the summit of Caher (1001m) and Caher West (975m) before bumbling back down to the car. This was a great route but actually quite strenuous as there was quite a lot of descent and ascent between each of the summits.

We also spotted some great wildlife along the way including a hare and some map lichen. Map lichen only grows in mountainous areas with clean air. Climatologist utilise the growing rate of the lichen to determine the age of deposits such as moraines to track glacial advances. This process is called lichenometry (for more info see https://www.kerryclimbing.ie/plants-and-lichens-of-the-irish-uplands/).

Matt also spotted a rare Kerry slug, these are protected and are only found in West Cork, Kerry and some parts of Northern Spain and Portugal, living in warm humid environments and feeding on lichen. Attempts were made to breed the slug in captivity in order to secure the population of the species, however these were not too successful, which is the opposite to my experience of keeping slugs and snails as a child.

As we were back to the car by 3pm we headed to Ross Castle. The castle was closed but we had a lovely walk around the grounds the beautifully still lake.

The following morning Matt and Veronika had to head back to Dublin but first we went for a short stroll around the Glenbeigh Fairy Forest. Here kids have built little fairy houses which have been arranged in the woods. At the end of the trail we climbed up through the woods and found a great view of the peninsula. This is part of the Ring of Kerry which is a scenic route around the county taking in lots of the beautiful coastline. After a lunch stop at Rossbeigh beach we said goodbye to Matt and Veronika and carried on around the coastline. 

We stopped at lots of pretty beaches with castles, and even spotted a Garden Tiger Moth caterpillar, eventually winding our way to Lough Hyne in county Cork. This is a sheltered marine lake, which was Ireland’s first marine reserve. The structure of the lake means the shallow neck joining the sea has fast-flowing, warm, oxygenated water. This creates an environment for a number of marine species only found in this location in Ireland. 

My main reason for visiting this lake was the reports of bio-luminescent plankton here. So after arriving at 6pm we camped out until sunset. There is a moonlit kayak tour which runs every evening and as the sun set we watched the kayakers launch onto the smooth lake. We spent the next hour sitting on the sea wall staring into the depths, when I spotted the first little twinkle of bio-luminescent plankton, at first Olly didn’t believe me but soon we saw quite a few. We also saw a pair of seals — well we think they were seals, but it was dark so hard to tell. This was far more successful than our last attempt at bio-luminescent plankton watching in Anglesey but it was sill not bright enough for a long exposure photo. I think we will have to visit the Maldives for that! 

That evening Olly had luckily realised that our ferry was a day earlier than we’d thought and in the morning we set off in the direction of Rosslare. We had a nice lunch stop at Dungarven facing the sea.

It turns out that paying for showers at leisure centres in Ireland isn’t a thing and we were turned away. We spotted a campsite near Rosslare and stopped in to ask, they said they wouldn’t usually let people not staying use the facilities but would let us this time for €2 each. ‘Yes!’ we thought; we can be clean before the long ferry crossing, and a 10 minute shower, what a luxury. This jubilation was rapidly cut short when we realised there was no hot water but feeling revitalised and marginally cleaner we headed to the ferry port and our next stop Cherbourg.

Portugal: Serra da Estrelaz (4/28)

We disembarked the ferry in Cherbourg, and headed for Mont-Saint-Michel — remembering to drive on the right! We’d seen it’s counterpart walking the South West Coast Path, and thought as it was only a short detour from our route we might as well pay it a visit.

We took a short, pleasant walk along the canal, and across the bridge, stopping at the dam to read the information sign. The new dam allows the river to wash away the sediment after high tide, preventing the tidal channel from filling up and thus preserving the island.

We continued driving for a while, before stopping just outside of Rennes, in the small town of Bain-de-Bretagne, with lots of other motorhomes. 

The next day we drove to Spain. One of the downsides to this venture was always going to be that there’d be a lot of driving. We stopped in a small, sleepy town for lunch; and again at a supermarket for some supplies. By avoiding the toll roads we occasionally had some slightly more interesting views, but mainly it meant navigating many more roundabouts.

We stopped in a little hilltop car park outside of Zumaia; and woke up to some lush, green scenery — not what I’d usually associate with Spain.

We visited the beach in Zumaia to see the interesting rock formations. It also happens to be where they filmed a scene in a recent Game of Thrones episode. 

We then headed on towards Portugal, with a stop in Salamanca on the way. We had a stroll round the old city, admiring the interesting, sandstone architecture. 

We spent the night just across the Portuguese border, outside a sleepy, walled village. In the morning, we set off in search of a café and some Portuguese tarts, or pastel de nata (cream cake) in Portuguese.

We then set off for the National Park, but soon we accidentally strayed onto an electronic toll road, and then had to pull over to work out how we should pay. The toll system seems remarkably fragmented and convoluted, at least to us as outsiders. 

 The highest point in Portugal, Serra da Estrelaz, actually has a road all the way to the top. We’d decided to make it a little more interesting and found a short walk to the top. However when we got to the start, the ski center, and saw the walk was through piles of rock, ski run fences and between chair left poles we gave up and drove up to the summit; parked and walked the 10m to the tower which marked the top. 

A pretty underwhelming achievement, but we were rewarded with great, panoramic scenery. 

We stayed the night here, to take advantage of the cooler air, and then headed back in to Spain and towards Mulhacén — our next peak.

Spain: Mulhacén (5/28)

After spending the night on top of the Portuguese peak we decided to do the drive to the Spanish peak in one day. Partly to save time and partly because sleeping at altitude is a lot cooler.

We had some culinary adventures in Portugal, Olly had accidentally purchased ‘nabisca’ which translated to turnip greens. This looks deceptively like spinach but tastes like eating your mum's garden plants. We also bought (on purpose) what translated to ‘japanese aubergines’. These are purpler longer aubergines which having a higher skin to flesh ratio compared to normal aubergines were delicious.

The drive between peaks was 9.5 hours, the last 1.5 hours of which was a series of hairpin turns up the mountain through a series of small villages clinging to the mountainside. We even had to stop at one point to navigate around a parade complete with brass band and daytime fireworks.

After the last village the narrow tarmac road became a gravel track and our van got a real shake down. Luckily we only lost one piece of cladding which was loose anyway. We settled in for the night ready for peak day.

After an early start we headed up through the pine forest towards the peak. We were following a description and GPS track we found online which made a loop walk. There was a pleasant incline for the most part and we made it to the top (3479m) in just under 4 hours. This was a similar ascent gain to Ben Nevis but just at a higher altitude. (NB Olly is standing on a higher rock in our summit photo, I'm not that small).

We spotted a heard of chamois (high altitude goats) and were being careful not to scare them, as they seemed shy. That was until we saw one at the summit eating discarded banana skins and orange peel unbothered by our presence.

We ate our sandwiches took some photos and headed down the other side of the peak on some steep scree zigzags. We soon lost some altitude and then followed a gentle track, traversing around, meeting a junction we‘d passed on the way up. We decided to complete the loop, this might have been a mistake as it was now very hot and the second half of the loop back to the car seemed a lot longer. We actually walked 28km (17.4 miles) in total.

Back at the van we had bucket showers and some celebratory warm french rosé before having an early night. We had been having a problem of flies coming into the van. Every evening we had to spend 10 minutes shoeing the flies out of the side window before going to sleep. Olly had attempted to make fly traps with duck tape but the flies weren't interested and we decided to remove them before I got my hair stuck in one.

The next morning we made our way back down the steep road stopping for some breakfast in the first town. The restaurant owner didn’t speak English but we managed to use Google Translate to ask for “breakfast” which turned out to be toasted bread with tomatoes and cured ham which was very tasty.

Our next stop was Xàtiva, a small town on the outskirts of Valencia which had some climbing nearby. Valencia is famous as being the home of paella, we decided this should be out first meal out of the trip and scoured the internet for a good restaurant. We arrived in the town and headed to our carefully selected restaurant, unfortunately it was closed on a Tuesday. As were, as far as we could tell, all the other restaurants selling paella. This left us with the only option of buying cold paella off the deli counter in the supermarket. Luckily it turned out to be very tasty.

Being inland in Southern Spain was very warm and we had a sweaty night’s sleep as the van isn’t designed for conducting away body heat. Undeterred in the morning we headed to the climbing location and started on the easiest route. A 4a called El Rio, this was considerably harder than I was expecting and was made more difficult by the 30 degree blazing sunshine. We then hid in the woods for a couple of hours until the wall came into shade and managed one more route Es Carlota (5a) which was also hard.

We then decided to get a few miles under our belts towards our next destination Barcelona. We stopped half way at a little seaside resort town, without the tourists. I’m not sure when tourist season starts, but early June is very quiet. It was very windy and we decided to hide in the van rather than be sand blasted on a walk along the beach.

Olly had initially been against the cool box but on having his first van cooled beer he decided that it was actually a good idea. Similarly I had been against bringing the whole 130 piece socket set with us, but having needed to use an obscure socket to tighten the handle of our frying pan, it has now been justified.

Our next stop was Barcelona, instead of stressfully driving into he city centre where there is limited parking and lots of horror stories about van break ins we decided to stop at an actual campsite.

This meant we could bus into town, but also refill our water and have our first hot showers in 10 days!

We did the usual tourist things, mainly walking around the city looking at the Antoni Gaudi architecture. Unfortunately tickets to go inside La Sagrada Familia were sold out so instead we sat on some benches and watched the cranes lift bits of masonry. The large unfinished Catholic church is set to be finished in 2032 but was started in 1882.

Whilst in Barcelona we met up with one of Olly’s old work colleagues and had a pleasant evening eating tapas and catching up over a few beers.

Our campsite crib sheet had said the last bus was at 10pm but by consulting Google we worked out we could get two buses and leave at 11.30. This was all going to plan until at the university hospital where we had to change buses we read the bus timetable and the bus Google suggested appeared not to exist. The bus time came and went with no bus. So Olly decided to install the Barcelona version of Uber on his phone. No one accepted our ride request on this app or another he installed.

So we had a few options; a 3.5 hour walk, wait until the next bus at 6am or go into the hospital and hope they had a number for a local taxi. We went for option 3 and were pleasantly surprised the the taxi we rang with our limited Spanish vocabulary arrived just 30 seconds later.

Safely back at the campsite we turned in and just about managed to leave the following morning before kicking out time.

We then started the long drive to Croatia, I don’t think I have ever had a route on my Google maps which the duration time has been in days before.

As we neared the French border we spotted a very scantily clad hitch hiker in a very small bikini and high heels. A little further on there was another and another and we realised they were prostitutes. I was surprised as I wouldn’t have expected them to be so blatantly selling their wares at midday on the main road.

After doing some googling we worked out that prostitution is legal in Catalan but not in neighbouring France, hence in addition to the cheap cigarettes, alcohol and fuel people are crossing the border to use the brothels. There is some controversy surrounding local brothel's as although prostitution is legal the brothels have been linked to human trafficking.

We continued our journey east in the direction of Croatia.