Golden Bay, Malta

Where it sits. Golden Bay — il-Mixquqa in Maltese, and formerly Military Bay in English — is a sandy cove on the northwest coast of Malta, at the seaward end of a valley below the hamlet of Manikata. It faces west-northwest, which is the single most important thing about it: this is one of the few beaches on the island where the sun sets directly over the water, and the reason the sand fills every evening in summer with people who have no intention of swimming. The bay is bracketed by clay slopes and low headlands, with Għajn Tuffieħa Bay 345 metres to the south beyond a rocky point, and the protected coastline of Majjistral Park running north.

The beach itself. The sand is pale and coarse, peppered with small pebbles at the waterline, and the shore shelves gently enough that swimmers can walk out rather than jump. Lifeguards are on duty through the summer months and a marked swimming zone is buoyed off from the water-sports area. The bay is exposed to the northwest, and that exposure is the thing visitors most often underestimate: when a swell is running, the shorebreak here is heavy, and the currents that develop off the headlands can pull a swimmer sideways and out. Red-flag days are common in autumn and the flags are worth taking seriously.

What sits above it. The southern slope carries a large cliff-top hotel opened in the mid-2000s, whose terraces look straight down the bay; beach clubs, kiosks and sunbed concessions occupy the sand itself, and a bus terminus and car park sit immediately behind. The Għajn Tuffieħa international scout campsite is a short distance inland and runs year-round. On the northern side, the ground rises into the garrigue of Majjistral Nature and History Park, declared in 2007 and covering six kilometres of protected coast within the Natura 2000 network — clay slopes, sand dune remnants, boulder scree and rocky steppe holding more than 350 species of wild plant, among them the endemic Maltese pyramidal orchid that serves as the park's emblem.

Coastal defence, again. The bays here were an obvious landing point, and history bears that out. In May 1565 the Ottoman fleet anchored off Mejjiesa, Mixquqa, Għajn Tuffieħa and Ġnejna before moving round to Marsaxlokk to begin the Great Siege. Grand Master Lascaris laid the first stone of Għajn Tuffieħa Tower on the cliff south of the bay in 1637. Toward the end of the Order's rule, coastal entrenchments were run above the sand to make a landing here harder, and the British later took over a large tract of surrounding farmland for a Royal Marines training centre, adding camouflaged concrete beach posts in 1935 and an anti-aircraft battery during the war.

On screen. The production that most visibly used this bay is The Devil's Double (2011), which filmed at the resort hotel above Golden Sands among a long list of Maltese locations. The neighbouring bay at Għajn Tuffieħa and its tower have their own credits, including the Disney thriller Trenchcoat (1983) and the action feature Black Eagle (1988) with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and the whole stretch of coast has been used repeatedly for advertising and television work because it delivers open sand, cliffs, a watchtower and no modern building in the frame.

Walking from the sand. Golden Bay is the best starting point for the coastal walk south. A path climbs the headland, drops to Għajn Tuffieħa down a staircase of around 200 steps, and continues over the next ridge to Ġnejna Bay — roughly an hour and a half end to end, with the Roman baths at Għajn Tuffieħa, the Lascaris tower and a series of clifftop viewpoints along the way. Northward the park paths run through garrigue toward Anchor Bay and Popeye Village. Neither route has shade or water.

Getting there and timing. Bus 44 from Valletta and 101 from Mellieħa terminate at the bay, a journey of around 50 minutes from the capital; the car park fills by mid-morning at weekends between June and September. Facilities are good by Maltese beach standards — showers, toilets, sunbed and umbrella hire, kiosks and a couple of restaurants — and a ramp gives partial access down to the sand, though the last stretch is soft. May, June, September and early October are the best months for swimming and space. The bay's real signature, though, is any clear evening at any time of year, when the light goes copper on the clay slopes and the whole beach turns to face the horizon.