Dolmen Hotel Malta — a sunny September stay in Saint Paul's Bay

A relaxed September week on Malta's north coast: warm sea, golden evenings, and a seafront hotel that makes it easy to explore the island.

We arrived at Malta International Airport in early September, still carrying the last warmth of a British summer, and instantly felt the difference. The air was dry and warm, the light was bright, and the sea looked inviting from the first glimpse. We picked up a hire car and headed north to Saint Paul's Bay, where the Dolmen Hotel Malta sits on a rocky promontory between Bugibba and Qawra, a fifteen minute drive that felt like an easy landing.

First impressions of the hotel were reassuring. Check-in was quick, our room was ready ahead of time, and we were pointed towards a cold drink on the terrace while our bags were taken up. The lobby leans slightly dated — plenty of marble and mirrored surfaces — but it's kept spotlessly clean, and there's a genuine warmth from the staff that a slicker property often lacks. Within an hour we'd changed, wandered down to the seafront, and were watching the light turn gold across the bay.

The hotel's real selling point is its position. The pools and terraces look straight out across the water, and there are steps down to a small swimming platform for a quick snorkel. The main pool is large and framed by palm trees, and even in early September there was enough space to claim a lounger without a dawn rush. The rooms are comfortable rather than cutting-edge, with clean lines and decent balconies, and the staff are the kind who recognise you at breakfast and ask how your day out went. Breakfast itself is a proper buffet — cooked to order eggs, decent pastries, fresh fruit and good coffee — and enough of a spread that we usually skipped lunch.

Saint Paul's Bay itself is a relaxed base. We walked the seafront promenade most evenings, stopping for pasta and local wine, and watched the fishing boats bob in the harbour. There are more restaurants than you can reasonably work through in a week, from tucked-away trattorias to bigger places with a view; we had our best meal at a small family-run spot a few streets back from the water, where the octopus and a bottle of Maltese red set us back less than a supermarket dinner back home.

By day we used the hire car to explore, and Malta rewards that kind of dipping in and out. Mdina, the old silent city, was the highlight — we visited late in the afternoon, when the coach parties had thinned out and the honey-coloured limestone glowed in the low sun. Valletta is small enough to walk in an afternoon, with viewpoints over the Grand Harbour that genuinely stop you in your tracks, and we spent a full day on Gozo taking in the Citadel, the salt pans, and a long lunch overlooking the sea at Xlendi. The Blue Grotto boat trip is touristy but worth doing early in the morning when the water is at its clearest.

September proved the perfect month for all of this: hot enough for the beach, cool enough to wander walled cities without wilting, and quiet enough that the restaurants still had tables without needing to book a week ahead. Sea temperatures are at their warmest after a summer of sunshine, and the light in the evening is unreasonably lovely. We'd happily go back to the Dolmen — probably in a refurbished room if there's an option — and use it again as a base to see more of the island's south coast and the Hagar Qim temples we didn't quite manage to fit in.