Ramla Bay

Where it sits. Ramla is the largest sandy beach on Gozo and the only one on the island of any real size, occupying the mouth of a wide fertile valley on the north coast between the plateaux of Xagħra and Nadur. Its full Maltese name, Ramla l-Ħamra, means the red sand, and it is not a poetic exaggeration: the sand is a distinct orange-red, coloured by iron oxides weathered out of the clay and sandstone in the valley behind. The bay faces north-northeast, roughly four hundred metres of open beach between two headlands, with the ground rising steeply to the west towards the cliff terrace where Calypso's Cave is said to lie.

Underneath the sand. The back of the beach conceals the remains of a substantial Roman villa, including a bath complex with heated rooms and traces of mosaic and marble, partially excavated in the early twentieth century under the Maltese archaeologist Themistocles Zammit and then largely reburied for its own protection. The valley behind was rich agricultural land in antiquity and remains so today, with a shallow watercourse, reed beds and vegetable gardens running inland. Nothing of the villa is visible on the surface, which is itself part of the site's character: this is a beach where the archaeology is under the towels.

The wall in the water. Because Ramla was the obvious place on Gozo for an enemy to put troops ashore, the Order of St John fortified it in the eighteenth century with a set of works that are unusually legible for their type. An entrenchment with gun positions was thrown across the back of the beach, and a rock-cut fougasse — a mortar carved directly into the bedrock and loaded with stones — was cut into the flanking cliff. Most striking is the underwater wall: a stone barrier built across the shallows of the bay to ground and hole any landing craft attempting the beach. Sections of it are still visible from the surface on a calm, clear day, running as a dark line under the water a short distance out.

What you actually see today. The beach is backed by low dunes with restoration plantings, a rare and fragile habitat in the Maltese islands, fenced in places to keep feet out of the marram and sea daffodil. In the middle of the sand stands a small whitewashed statue of the Virgin, erected in 1878 by a local benefactor and repainted ever since. There are no hotels and no permanent buildings: the whole bay lies within protected Natura 2000 designation, and successive development proposals for the valley have been fought off by campaigners over several decades. In summer a handful of seasonal kiosks sell food and rent umbrellas; from November to March there is nothing at all except sand, wind and the occasional dog walker.

Above the bay. A steep path climbs the western headland to the terrace beneath Calypso's Cave, the spot Maltese tradition identifies with the cave where the nymph detained Odysseus for seven years in the Odyssey. The passage itself has been closed for years after rockfalls, but the viewing terrace gives the classic composition of Ramla: red sand, turquoise shallows, green valley and terraced fields stacked behind. On the eastern side, a rougher track climbs towards Nadur and the cave of il-Mixta, a wide rock shelter looking straight down the bay, which is the better spot in the late afternoon when the western headland throws shade.

Getting there and timing. Bus 322 from Victoria via Xagħra reaches the western approach in about twenty minutes; the Nadur side is served by bus 303 and a longer walk down. By car, both roads end in unsurfaced parking that fills by mid-morning in July and August. The descent from Xagħra on foot takes around twenty-five minutes down a rough track and is a pleasant walk in either direction outside high summer. Swimming is generally easy over a gently shelving sandy bottom, but a strong northeasterly pushes swell and undertow straight into the bay and the beach should be treated with respect on those days. May, June, September and October give warm water and a beach that is not shoulder to shoulder. There is no shade whatsoever beyond what you bring, and the last stretch of the approach on both sides is loose sand, which rules out wheeled access.