by Charlie Warmington

Malta is set like a gem in the vast bracelet of the Mediterranean Sea.
South of Sicily, between Europe and North Africa, the awesomely beautiful little archipelago is bountifully bequeathed with history, culture and scenery.
Just a few easy hours’ walking and driving took me through a past inhabited by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, Normans, Sicilians, Spanish, Knights of St. John, and more recently, the French and the British.
I dipped my fingers in the deep, divinely-blue waters of the ancient, fortified harbour.
Here, on 14 August 1942, the torpedo-torn, bomb-ravaged, Belfast-built ship Rochester Castle, the first of four mangled survivors from a total of 15 vessels in Operation Pedestal (the Malta Convoy) limped into the heavily bombed port.
The historic convoy saved Malta and profoundly changed the course of WWII.
The New Testament recounts the shipwrecked Paul of Tarsus on Malta in AD 60.
I looked across to the site of the wreck on St. Paul’s Island and remembered my Sunday school teacher telling me how the apostle was bitten by a poisonous snake but suffered no ill effects.
There are olive trees bearing deliciously distinctive olives that are probably direct descendants of the white ones that flourished in abundance when St. Paul was there!
Only the three largest islands on the archipelago are populated - Malta, Gozo and Comino.
Tourism is the main source of income, and one of the most scenically spectacular locations that attracts busloads of them is the sea-sculpted Azure Window on Gozo.
The iconic, flat-topped, natural rock-arch was created thousands of years ago when two limestone caves collapsed.
Standing on its surrounding elbow of fossil-embedded, sea-chiselled Maltese limestone, I looked in awe through the soaring portico of yellow and pale-grey rock comprised of ancient marine organisms.
It would have required a packed dictionary of hauntingly-beautiful adjectives to describe the azure-blue water spraying and spreading beneath and beyond the majestic window.
It is little wonder that Malta attracts multitudes of tourists.
And the film industry too!
Troy, Alexander, Orca Killer Whale, Midnight Express, The Count of Monte Cristo and Gladiator are just a few of the big-screen epics that were filmed here.
The Azure Window’s star role in the astronomically popular Game of Thrones television series has also generated enormous interest in Gozo’s magical, geological wonder!
It was the setting for Daenerys and Drogo’s wedding scene, most memorable amongst several Game of Thrones scenes shot on the archipelago.
But wait a moment!
In the fourth episode of the series, Marble Arch’s Pollnagollum Cave in Fermanagh was the setting for Game of Thrones’ hollow hill, the hideout behind a waterfall where Arya Stark and Gendry met Beric Dondarrion and the Brotherhood without Banners!
And Enniskillen’s Blakes of the Hollow boasts the fourth Door of Thrones!
Many millions of the television series’ fans around the world know and love these curiously-named film locations from the most popular and most successful fantasy television series ever made.
I recently embarked on Tourism Northern Ireland’s ‘Stones and Thrones territory trip’ to the ‘mesmerising fantasy lands of Westeros’ - the name given to our gorgeous countryside and Causeway coastline in the series.
A number of guided and private bus tours visit the 20 (yes 20!) film locations around Northern Ireland that are publically accessible.
The sun shone blisteringly hot over Gozo.
I visited our local Stones and Thrones’ locations in torrential rain yet there were coachloads of film fans from near and far at each location.
I’m reliably informed that about 80 per cent of the scenes in the series are shot around Northern Ireland and in Belfast’s Titanic Studios.
In celebration of our scenic success, ten intricately carved doors made from two centuries-old beech trees from Stranocum’s Dark Hedges were recently unveiled, including the one in Blakes.
Gracehill House’s magnificent avenue of beeches, which feature in one of the most memorable Thrones scenes - the Kingsroad - lost the pair of trees to Storm Gertrude in January.
The timber was shaped into ten hefty doors that were engraved with images inspired by the series.
In pubs, restaurants and hotels close to the main film locations, the doors attract huge numbers of visitors.
My ‘territory trip’ with a busload of Thrones’ fans, all unnervingly fluent with the storyline, included a door in Frank Owens bar in Limavady, near Dragonstone, a film location I previously knew as Downhill strand!
Each location - at the Bishop’s Road to Gortmore; at Ballintoy, where the Sea Bitch was moored; at Gracehill’s magnificent tree lined avenue, and in County Fermanagh - is known, loved and cherished internationally.
Game of Thrones is the world’s window on an extraordinarily beautiful little country.
And we who are so privileged to live here need only step through our own front door!
Visit www.discovernorthernireland.com/gameofthrones for full information about film locations and tours.
The Impartial Explorer was in Malta with www.maltadirect.com