Fulwood Books

Driving on the Island required strong nerves, and I never saw a Maltese woman behind the driving wheel. Fortunately I had learnt to drive in North Wales, where narrow roads between high hedges tested one’s ability to react quickly when straying animals suddenly appeared around a  blind bend, or a tractor drove out of a farm gate looking to neither right nor left.

Officially, in Malta,  vehicles drove on the left but, with few road markings, most were driven where the driver chose – usually in the middle! Most disconcerting were large flocks of shoats, half sheep, half goat, ambling along between the crumbling stone walls, with only one, maybe two, small children in charge, or a wooden cart pulled by a donkey, piled high with vegetation, often with an old lady sitting on the back for ballast.