Last morning in Malta

We spent our last morning looking at Malta's defences and visiting the Lascaris war rooms, the nerve centre of its incredible defiance during World War 2.

The fortifications of Malta consist of natural rock walls, man-made walls, forts, towers and even a very deep man-made ditch. Malta's location has historically given it great strategic importance as a naval base, and a succession of powers, including the Phoenicians, Romans, Moors, Normans, Sicilians, Spanish, Order of St. John, French and British, have ruled it.

We got up from the harbour level to the Upper Barrakka Gardens by using the Barrakka lift. The gardens are beautiful and statues there honour a number of prominent people, including Sir Winston Churchill.

We finished our time in Malta by visiting the Lascaris War Rooms. The British started work on the secret underground war rooms in 1940, during the siege of Malta, when a series of tunnels under the Upper Barrakka Gardens were expanded. They even got Welsh coal miners to do some of the excavating. The complex was completed in early 1943.

The Lascaris War Rooms contained operations rooms for each of the fighting services, from where both the defence of Malta and other operations in the Mediterranean were coordinated. The Operation Headquarters at Lascaris communicated directly with radar stations around the Maltese islands.

It was nice to hear our guide credit New Zealander Keith Park for his role in organising the defence of Malta. Malta was more heavily bombed than London.

Once the Italians and German's had given up on trying to conquer Malta the war rooms became the command centre for the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.

After the war the rooms became the HQ of the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet. They played an active part during the Suez Crisis of 1956, and were put into full alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when a Soviet missile strike against Malta was feared. In 1967, the complex was taken over by NATO to be used as a communication centre for the interception of Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean. Only when they were closed down in 1977 did the people of Malta learn that they even existed.

We then headed back to our hotel to collect our suitcases and say goodbye to Miguel and Maria who looked after us so well.  On our walk back to the hotel and then on our taxi ride to the airport we saw many vehicles speeding through the streets with people waving flags and tooting horns. The ruling Labour Party had won the election.