Laura Chubb

Mark Wilkinson visits Malta’s sister island, Gozo, and finds it ticks all the boxes for families during half-term

WHEN families are looking for an easy island break with a spot of sun, not too far from home, the usual suspects spring to mind — the Balearics, the Canaries, the Greek islands. But there’s another destination sitting quietly in the middle of the Mediterranean, with lovely warm spring and autumn days ideal for little ones who struggle in summer heat.

It’s home to some of the friendliest people you could meet, who without exception speak excellent English — great for we lazy Brits abroad. The destination for our family’s October half-term break was Malta and its sister island Gozo. As we came in to land, we realised we weren’t quite sure to expect.

Malta was part of the British Empire for more than 150 years, so we knew a little about driving on the left and red pillar boxes. I also had a vague recollection from school history lessons about the island being a stomping ground of the Knights of St John.

But would Malta be like Gibraltar, or more like Greece and Cyprus, or perhaps its neighbour Sicily — just 60 miles away to the north? We discovered that it’s a bit of everything: a mish-mash of the cultures that have influenced the island over thousands of years.

Like Greece, you have ancient ruins, including the Ggantija Temples in Gozo, a Unesco World Heritage site constructed 1,000 years before the Pyramids were built. And like its Italian neighbour it has a culture centred around church and the family, many of whom can be seen getting together to enjoy ftira — a Maltese speciality somewhere between a pizza and a flatbread.

We spent most of our visit on Gozo. At just eight miles long and four miles wide, it’s a convenient base — pretty much everywhere can be reached by car within half an hour. The island is normally lush after a hot summer but there was little sign of grass anywhere when we visited — unusual enough for the locals to tell us how they were wish-