We have spent the last few days obsessed with looking at the weather forecast for Malta. It changes everyday there seems to be a good chance of thunderstorms, heavy rain and strong winds this weekend but at least it should be warmer than at home.

With our waterproofs packed we set off early for Heathrow, but being half term the traffic through Oxford was not a problem and with the easy on site parking made a smooth journey to Heathrow .Meeting up with Simon and Elly our journey to Malta continued with no hassle and we arrived at our apartment in Sliema within an hour of the plane landing. This must be an all time record. Our apartment is very spacious and on the 4th floor has a lovely balcony overlooking the bay to Valleta.
With a Strava segments situated a 100yards away a quick jog to check it out was required . Elly succeeded in being queen of the mountain Well done Elly ! Simon managed to be joint king , he didn't want to pull a muscle! On this little jaunt round the bay Simon managed to drop the room key. Luckily he realised this and we retraced our steps to find it.
We walked to a hotel on the other side of Sliema to pick up our race numbers. It wasn't exactly Exel just a room in a hotel , the queue was horrendous so we decided to get some food and return later.
As we were all starving, the Air Malta cuisine not to everyone's liking (a soggy tuna and tomato paste roll ) we decided to go for a starter as well as pizza , the result being we were so stuffed with lovely Maltese bread there was no room left for much of the pizza. Waste not want not, the pizzas were boxed up for later consumption. We re-joined the queue, and now two hours later it was much better and smell of pizzas from our boxes gave us some envious looks, we almost exchanged half eaten pizzas for a sweatshirt.
Returning to our apartment, poor Elly had to suffer the competitive Le Goods playing card games before we retired to bed.