Cirkewwa

Where it sits. Ċirkewwa is the northernmost point of the Maltese mainland: a small rocky peninsula at the end of the Mellieħa peninsula, where the main island road finally runs out at the water. It is not a town — there is no village core, no square, no parish — but a harbour with a hotel, a car park and a set of ferry ramps. The name comes from the Maltese ċirka, a circle, for the way the headland curves out into the channel. What it lacks in settlement it makes up for in traffic: everything and everyone crossing to Gozo passes through here.

The Gozo channel. The Ċirkewwa terminal is the mainland end of the Gozo Channel ferry route to Mġarr harbour on Gozo, a crossing of roughly 5.5 km that takes about 25 minutes across the South Comino Channel. Boats run frequently through the day and continue on a reduced timetable overnight, carrying vehicles on the lower deck and foot passengers above. The current terminal building, with covered waiting areas and multiple loading lanes, replaced a far more basic arrangement and handles a very large share of Malta's domestic movement. In summer, additional operators run passenger boats from the same shore to the Blue Lagoon on Comino, which lies directly opposite, and a fast-ferry service links the north to Valletta.

Malta's most dived shore site. For divers, Ċirkewwa is the reference point of the whole archipelago, and the reason is topography: a shore entry that puts you straight over dramatic underwater terrain without a boat. The seabed drops through cliffs, tunnels and caves, and a natural arch stands on the bottom at around 27 metres. Two intentional wrecks lie within reach of the same entry points. The tugboat MV Rozi was scuttled in 1992 for a tourist submarine venture that has since ceased operating, and sits upright and largely intact at about 30 to 36 metres, her superstructure shallow enough to be lit by daylight. The P29 patrol boat — a Kondor-class vessel that served the East German navy before passing to the Armed Forces of Malta — was sunk in 2007 a short swim away at similar depth. Between and around them run the named features every Maltese dive briefing uses: the arch, the chimney, Susie's Pool, the coral gardens on the shallow reef. Off Marfa Point a statue of the Madonna has been placed in a natural cavern by a local diving club, a standard stop on the return leg. Visibility here is routinely over 30 metres, and the site works at every level from a first open-water dive to a technical descent.

Protecting the site. Because the area is so heavily used — dive schools run shore entries from the ladders here almost every day of the year — the diving community began organising from 2010 to have Ċirkewwa designated a voluntary marine reserve, with a code of conduct covering anchoring, spearfishing and boat traffic negotiated with fishing and boating interests. It remains a rare Maltese example of user-led marine management. Away from the dive ladders there is also the Ċirkewwa Hole, sometimes called the Wied Musa natural pool, a small rock inlet near the terminal used by locals as a quiet swimming spot.

What else is on the headland. Paradise Bay, a small sandy cove reached by a long flight of steps, sits just south of the peninsula and faces west toward Gozo — one of the better places on the island to watch the sun go down behind the Comino channel. Above it the ground rises to the garrigue of Marfa Ridge and the ruins of coastal entrenchments. Wied Musa Battery, an eighteenth-century work of the Order of St John, survives on the shore nearby; its ammunition was once stored up at the Red Tower. A large resort hotel occupies the ground above the terminal, and beyond it the peninsula is bare rock, scrub and dive-school minibuses.

Getting there and timing. Buses 41 and 42 from Valletta, 221 from Buġibba, 222 from Sliema and the X1 airport express all terminate at Ċirkewwa; the journey from Valletta takes about an hour. Driving, the terminal has substantial parking, but on summer weekends and public holidays the queue for the Gozo ferry can stretch back along the road, and travelling early or late avoids most of it. Diving conditions are best from May to October, when the water reaches 25°C and the northwesterly swell is least likely to close the shore entries; in winter the site is regularly unusable for two or three days at a time when the wind swings into the northwest, and the ferry itself occasionally suspends sailings in heavy weather.