After a day at sea yesterday we were looking forward to our Malta visit. I’ve read extensively about the siege of Malta during WW2, so was impressed upon entering the Grand Harbour, and could imagine the stricken oil tanker Ohio limping in with its vital cargo.

Our prime reason to visit was to pay homage to Hazel’s father who served here at Ta’Qali airbase in the RAF from 1940 -43 as an ground engineer during the siege. The site is now an aviation museum, and I’d been in correspondence with its Curator. First up was to get there, on the hop on/hop off bus. This was mainly off than on, with numerous bus changes and waiting. We did get to visit Mdina before all the other tourists. Being a hilltop village/fortification it had very narrow streets, easily clogged with traffic, let alone tourists. After another bus wait we finally got to Ta’Qali and was given a warm welcome by Ray Polidano. He was most interested in the photos we’d bought along, and promptly scanned them. Then he made our day and invited us to sit in their Spitfire cockpit and have a Hurricane pic ! A dream realised, even though Hazel found it a challenge to get out. It’s incredibly tight and not good visibility, let alone being shot at !  He then spent 2 hours taking us around and giving us coffee. THANKS RAY, what a treat !

Even starting at 8.30 it was now 2.30, with a couple more hours on the bus…….after visiting Valetta we pulled the pin at 6pm after a long hot day, but very rewarding. More pics to follow after a shower and dinner.