Malta riding 20th September

Malta doesn’t claim to be a destination for a training cyclist; with its small size, narrow roads, almost as many registered cars as inhabitants, and a reputation for bad roads and impatient drivers. Where indicators are seldom used and roundabouts are organised chaos!

But in reality the drivers have so far been no worse than Melbourne drivers, with most giving me plenty of room. The roads so far that I’ve ridden are mostly okay, with only a smaller number better suited to training for the cobbled Paris – Roubaix road race, and I’ve ridden 60 – 70 km days without having to ride the same road twice in the day.

There is a small road and MTB racing scene on the island, with a calendar of races in the cooler months. It was with the islands oldest cycling club – the Mosta Cycling Club that I rode with on their regular Sunday morning ride. Since it was the off season, it was mostly at a leisurely pace and they took a scenic route via the south west coast so I could see some of the sights. We then continued on just below the old city of Mdina before riding a lap of the Coast Road to St Paul’s bay where we stopped for a social break. I obviously hadn’t acclimatised yet to being on the island and even in the heat I had an Espresso, where as everyone else has a cold drink.

The only serious incident so far has been when I hit a patch of Maltese ‘black ice’ taking a corner on Monday. I took the corner at a speed that would normally be fine elsewhere, but this corner was a glassy smooth piece of tar which I quickly discovered had zero friction. The bike went straight out from under me and I slid a good distance on my left side. Luckily the cars going both directions were far enough away so could stop in time.

I did well putting myself between the bike and ground, so the bike was relatively unscathed. Unfortunately though I’m now down one pair of bib shorts, sporting a nice red, seeping 8cm diameter section of missing skin on my left hip plus grazes on my triceps and knee, and expect given how sore my hip is a nice bruise to go with it.