Delimara peninsula

Where it sits. The Delimara peninsula is the long, low tongue of limestone that forms the eastern arm of Marsaxlokk Bay and terminates at the southeastern corner of the Maltese main island. It runs roughly three kilometres from the village of Marsaxlokk, about two and three-quarter kilometres away at its landward end, out to a blunt point with Birżebbuġa visible across the water some two kilometres to the west. Nowhere does it rise much above sixty metres, and its spine is a plateau of thin soil and bare rock with fields walled in rubble on the sheltered western side and open garrigue on the exposed east. In Maltese it is Dellimara. It carries no village, only scattered farmhouses, boathouses in the inlets and the infrastructure of the last century and a half.

A landscape of inlets. The eastern shore is bitten into by a series of small bays, each one a slot cut along a fault or joint in the rock. St Peter's Pool is the best known, a smooth-sided natural swimming basin near the northern end. South of it come Il-Ħofra ż-Żgħira and Il-Ħofra l-Kbira, wider and much emptier, and then Kalanka, a narrow cleft with clear deep water and a rocky entry. On the western side, facing the bay, the shore is gentler and lined with fishermen's boathouses and rock-cut moorings. The whole coastline is a recognised marine and terrestrial conservation area; the garrigue supports thyme, sea squill, Mediterranean heath and a spring flora of orchids, and the cliffs are used by nesting seabirds, which has put the peninsula repeatedly at the centre of arguments over bird hunting and trapping.

Fortified for three hundred years. A small watchtower called Torre della Limara was completed on the point in 1659, the tenth of the thirteen towers built under Grand Master Martin de Redin to close the gaps in Malta's coastal warning chain; a gun battery was added beside it in 1793. Both were later demolished. The British, who regarded Marsaxlokk Bay as a potential enemy anchorage and a possible second fleet base, replaced them on an entirely different scale: Fort Delimara, a polygonal work built between 1876 and 1888, sits above the eastern cliffs with its magazines, casemates and gun positions largely intact. It is unrestored, structurally fragile and threatened by coastal erosion, and it is one of the more atmospheric ruins on the island precisely because nothing has been done to it.

The lighthouse and the power station. On the crest of the peninsula stands the Delimara lighthouse, first lit in 1855 and now a pair of buildings — the octagonal Victorian tower with its keeper's house, restored and converted to holiday apartments, and a plain rectangular structure opened in 1990 that carries the working light and the radar for coastal traffic control. At the landward end, on the western shore, the Delimara power station has generated most of Malta's electricity since it came into operation in 1992. Converted to liquefied natural gas during the 2010s, it is served by a floating storage vessel moored permanently alongside, and its chimney is visible from a great deal of southern Malta. The juxtaposition defines the peninsula: a Natura 2000 coastline with a power station at one end and a Victorian fort at the other.

Walking it. A circuit on foot from Marsaxlokk out along the western road, across to the eastern shore and back is around ten kilometres and takes three to four hours at a steady pace, taking in the lighthouse, the fort's exterior, and as many of the inlets as time allows. Surfaces are a mix of tarmac lane, farm track and bare rock; there is no shade anywhere and no water source. Spring is the season for it, when the garrigue is in flower and the temperature is manageable; late autumn is nearly as good. In July and August the walk is hard work and better split, with an early start and a swim at the end.

Getting there and timing. Buses terminate in Marsaxlokk, and everything beyond that is on foot, by taxi or by hire car. The single road out along the peninsula is narrow, unlit and in poor condition in places, with limited turning space, and it can be blocked by parked cars near the swimming spots in high summer. Boat trips from Marsaxlokk offer the alternative view, running along the cliffs to the point and back in about an hour. Sunrise from the eastern inlets is the standout: this is the first ground in Malta the sun reaches, and the low light off the pale rock is what draws photographers here before the day begins.