Gozo in a Day: Coves and the Cittadella

The day starts on the water, so do it properly: skip the saloon, climb to the open deck and take the right-hand rail. Comino slides past mid-channel, all bare rock and improbable turquoise, and then Mġarr opens up ahead: a working harbour stacked with luzzijiet (the brightly painted fishing boats), the neo-Gothic church of Our Lady of Lourdes on the ridge, and Fort Chambray's walls on the headland above. Twenty-five minutes, coffee from the cafeteria in hand. Ashore, the 301 bus waits for the climb to Victoria and drivers roll straight off the ramp. Either way, you're on island time now.

Victoria on the map, Rabat to everyone born here. From the bus station walk up Republic Street and keep climbing until the Cittadella takes over, a walled outcrop that holds the whole island in one view: Marsalforn's ridge, the great dome of Xewkija, the sea on both sides. Inside, the cathedral pulls its famous trick: look up at the 'dome', then look again; it's a flat ceiling, painted. The lanes behind fall silent by mid-afternoon, which is the best time to have them to yourself. Most visitors do the ramparts and leave; the small museums in the old houses are the island's actual attic.

Down the hill is Independence Square: It-Tokk, 'the meeting place', and nobody uses the official name. Mornings it's a market: fruit vans, socks, lace, jars of capers and sun-dried tomatoes, and ġbejniet (sheep's-milk cheeselets, best cured in cracked pepper). The curved front of the Banca Giuratale presides at one end; old men hold parliament on the benches. Do a lap, graze, then slip into the alleys behind for St George's Basilica, all gilt and marble, and usually empty at market hour. This is your supply stop before the wilds of the west: buy the picnic here, because Dwejra sells sunsets, not lunch.

Dwejra is where Gozo shows its bones. The Azure Window stood here until one March morning in 2017; locals still give directions by it, the way you'd mention a late relative. What's left is arguably better: the Inland Sea, a green lagoon trapped behind the cliff, where boatmen thread an eighty-metre tunnel out to open water and idle beneath Fungus Rock; the Blue Hole, busy with divers by 09:00; and flat rock everywhere underfoot, printed with fossils. Walk out to where the Window stood and look down: its rubble is visible under the surface, already becoming reef.

Xlendi sits at the end of a drowned valley, cliffs on both sides, water the colour of bottle glass. The sandy patch in the middle is for toddlers; the real swimming is off the rocks on the right-hand side, where ladders drop straight into several metres of blue and local kids audition for lifeguard by leaping off everything. Swim out past the moored boats and look back at the village stacked in the valley mouth. Afterwards the waterfront restaurants do fresh fish, and the puddle-sized square fills for the evening stroll. If you only get one swim today, this is the one I'd pick.

Two temples of rough coralline limestone, standing since about 3600 BC: older than Stonehenge, older than the pyramids, built by people who had neither metal nor the wheel. Locals solved the engineering question centuries ago: a giantess, Sansuna, carried the megaliths over from Ta' Ċenċ with a baby at her hip. Do the interpretation centre first so the stones make sense, then take the southern temple slowly. The doorway slabs are the size of vans, and you can still trace spiral carvings and the sockets worn by whatever ritual needed them. Give it an hour, and give Ta' Kola Windmill, on the same ticket, fifteen minutes more.

Ramla l-Ħamra means 'the red one', and the sand really is: a rusty gold that turns properly red when wet. It's Gozo's biggest beach and still backed by dunes and tamarisks rather than concrete, with the white statue of Our Lady standing mid-bay since 1881. Swim, then look up at the western cliff: that's Calypso's Cave, where Homer's nymph allegedly detained Odysseus for seven years. There are worse places to be detained. The water stays shallow a long way out, the kiosks handle cold drinks, and late afternoon, when the coaches leave, the bay goes quiet and golden. End the day here.