Gozo; Saturday, 13 October, 2018

Yet another crack of dawn flight from Gatwick, yet another overnight airport stay, thankfully once again we’d been able to check-in bags the night before so in the bleary pre-dawn light we were able to head straight to the assisted travel desk to help mum through to the departures lounge.

We have an uneventful wait in departures, but as the departure time approached there was no sign of a gate appearing, long after later flights than ours had got theirs. In the end the gate number finally appeared a couple of minutes before departure was supposed to take place and then immediately went to final call. The guys from assisted travel were really good, picking everyone up and taking us over in the beeping buggy to the gate – which turned out to be the bus gate.

Whilst all the other passengers headed out on buses we were put on a minibus and taken out to the plane, where we entered one of those weird trucks that can raise itself from ground level to plane door level. Boarding through the front right door of the plane for the first time ever in my travels we quickly took our seats, and despite all the chaos with the gates we pushed back just five minutes late.

In Malta the assisted travel team were waiting there for mum and we repeated the process in reverse – though jumping the entire passport queue was a bit embarrassing with lots of very British tutting taking place. Bags collected we headed over to the bus stop and soon after were on the X1 heading across Malta.

It’s not a quick journey and it was a good 90 minutes before we finally reached Cirkewwa and the ferry across the Gozo channel to Mgarr. Thankfully the buses are timed to meet the ferry in this direction so a few minutes after getting off the bus we were sitting on the sun deck of the ferry preparing to cross the channel.

An uneventful crossing we arrived in Mgarr and, to avoid the steep hill up the hotel, picked up a taxi that promptly charged the same as it would have done if we’d headed all the way to the island capital of Rabat, but it meant we didn’t have to lug luggage up the hill and it helped mums knees.

After checking into the hotel we had a late afternoon drink on the hotels terrace overlooking the harbour before walking back down to the harbour and catching the bus into Rabat and changing there onto a bus to the harbour village of Xlendi. I’d remembered having a very nice meal in Xlendi the last time I visited, which was the reason for visiting.

We had a pre-dinner drink in a bar by the harbour watching the sun set into the mouth of the harbour, before walking down a little further to the nice restaurant for dinner.

Having consumed a very nice dinner we staggered slowly back to the bus stop and caught the bus back into Rabat, changing there onto a bus towards Mgarr and the hotel.