Discover Gibraltar, UK – Oct 20-21

The Rock of Gibraltar is world famous. Gibraltar is part of the UK even though it shares the border with Spain.

The rock takes up most of the land area of Gibraltar and contains kilometers of tunnels going through the mountain. The top is a preserve with several tourist attractions.

The easiest way to the top is to take a cable car up and walk down while visiting the attractions. For the cable car and a pass to the reserve, it costs 38 pounds.

There are also taxis that can go to the major spots for those with limited mobility, and for the adventurous, stairs go up to the top.

From the cable car is great views of the rock point. To get the reserve, I needed to go back to the cable car station and cross to the other side. Once I exited the building, there were two paths. One slanting up and the second going down.

Up led to some ruins and dead ends, so I ended up going back and taking the downward road. This was the correct path and again met with a road where I took the left path towards the Ape Den.

Walking along to the Apes Den, which doesn’t have apes but rather Barbary Macaques, a type of monkey.

The monkeys hang out on the railings and rocks along the road. They also love to hitch rides with the taxis that are going by. There were monkeys of all ages. I took way too many pictures and videos of them.

Past the Apes Den is the Skywalk, which offers views of the far side of the peninsula. The bottom is glass, which would be much scarier if it was clean. Mark Hamil, who plays Luke Skywalker in the Starwars franchise, inaugurated the skywalk.

Continuing down the road I visited St. Michael’s Cave. The caves are a series of limestone caves to which music and lights have been added. They were fun to visit and with the caves’ high ceilings, not claustrophobic at all.

Still heading down I stopped off at the suspension bridge, which unfortunately I had to go down to and then come back up. It was about 200 meters, but a fairly steep grade.

After the bridge, I crossed under the Charles V Wall constructed in 1540. On the other side of the mountain, I needed to go up 150 meters to reach the Great Seige Tunnels.

The lookout from this area offers a great view of the airport and runway of Gibraltar. When planes come in or take off, they close down the road to give the planes enough room to land.

Heading back down, I passed Queen Charlotte’s Battery, where the ice cream truck was doing brisk business.

The road is quite steep here as I passed the Moorish Castle. It was constructed around 711 and up until 2010, which was the prison for Gibraltar.

Following the Moorish Castle is another set of tunnels, The World War II Tunnels, currently under construction. To enter I needed to put on a hard hat and could view the open exhibit and tunnels.

Leading back to the town center are a bunch of steps called the castle steps.

On day two, I headed out to the airport to see if I could catch a plane landing. An Easy Jet flight from Manchester was scheduled to land shortly after I got to the airfield.

The runway is also the road and walking path for people going to the airport. Spain is right after the airport, so several workers live in Spain and walk or bike to Gibraltar daily.

A siren sounds giving a warning of an approaching plane, and security at either end closes the gates. People walking across are given a warning to cross quickly, and a truck with a sweeper dragging behind it goes out to make sure nothing is on the runway.

The plane was scheduled to approach the runway on my left, which would be perfect viewing but the plane couldn’t land on the first approach. It chose to circle and try again in ten minutes. So I waited.

The gates were reopened, and people and bikes could cross the tarmac until another warning siren sounded.

On the second approach, the plane came in on my right, which had a restricted view due to the security shed. It would have been better to have been on the opposite side of the runway closer to the airport.