Gozo

• Cultural melting point where Europe meets Africa
• Exceptionnaly gree nisland: lemon groves, vineyards, fig trees, peaches
• Fascinating blend of legend and 6000 years of history
• Astonishingly colourful wild flowers

Gozo is Malta's tiny sister island in the southern Mediterranean. 90km south of Sicily and 300 km from the Tunisian desert, it is the last outpost of Europe before Africa. Little-known, and often ignored by tourists, Gozo is a curious mixture of the enticingly exotic and the reassuringly familiar: palm trees, Arabic-style honey-coloured stone houses, lemon groves and the ubiquitous prickly pear all contrast wonderfully with the red GPO 'phone boxes and little Dixon of Dock Green police stations!

This is Calypso's Isle of Ogygia from Homer's Odyssey, where the beautiful nymph held Odysseus a prisoner of love for seven years (you can visit her cave on a walk), and it is a place where legend blends with history. There are Neolithic cave dwellings, a huge copper age temple pre-dating the Giza Pyramids by 1,000 years and an amazing array of monumental Baroque, neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque churches and basilicas.

Gozo is an astonishingly green and fertile island, and is the perfect size to be explored thoroughly, on a self-guided tour walking around Gozo for a week. The spectacular rocky coastline is full of hidden creeks, coves and tiny beaches, used for centuries by corsairs as hiding places, and there is some breathtaking cliff scenery. Inland, the walking is through tiny terraced and stone-walled fields along narrow gorge-like valleys, through ancient hilltop villages, and over the remote garrigue countryside, the scent of wild thyme, rosemary and heather crushed underfoot.

Combine all of the above and you have arguably the most attractive and fascinating island in the Mediterranean

Walking

Cycling