The Gibraltar Song(A Song about the Rock and it's People) Puerto de Santa Maria to Amazing Gibraltar - 26th April 2016

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Tuesday 26^thand the day after ANZAC Day, a day in our calendar that has become very important to us as we remember those who gave their lives in wars on the other side of the world to keep the world free for us and our fellow New Zealanders and Australian’s to be able to live and amongst other things, travel.We had commemorated ANZAC Day when we got home from dinner last night and watched a short video we had made of the ANZAC dawn service at the Mount last year. This year, yesterday, our daughter Erin was attending with husband Brent and she was wearing the medals her late grandfather never claimed when his service in the armed forces came to an end.

And today we going to visit a little piece of Blighty, then enclave of Gibraltar, a tiny piece of Spain ceded to the British in perpetuity in 1713.And there is no way the British are going to give up this strategic piece of rock at the narrow entry to the Mediterranean where Africa is but 14 Kilometres away.

Peggy was waiting patiently for her run east and we paid €4 for the two days of parking and drove back to the penthouse apartment to load up our luggage. We have this down to a fine art now and after we each take a suitcase and a backpack on one trip we only have to carry the ‘odd and sods ‘which includes the pillows, box of groceries (that never seems to dwindle in supply) and chilly bag with the grocery items that need to be kept chilled while in transit to our next accommodation and refrigerator.

Heading east on the A4 it became apparent to us why the drive to Cadiz from Puerto was about 30km.The land between the two towns was mostly swampy and although there were a few derelict buildings on the higher ground there was no sign of life being lived in the vast area away from the highway towards Cadiz city in the distance.

One of the routes the GPS gave us was inland but we chose one that looked to be as coastal as a road got to the sea as we wanted to take advantage of any seascapes as we travelled east.

The countryside was rolling pastures and also fields of crops although no where as intensive as the agriculture had been on the road down from Seville.

The double laned divided highway gave way to a single lane in each direction and our progress slowed as we caught up with slower vehicles on a road that undulated a fair bit.

Then we dropped down into a valley that obviously caught the prevailing wind as there were as many wind turbines as we had ever seen in such a small area.Most of them lined up in rows and then others that were placed here and there in a haphazard manner.

Our thoughts went back to the days when even the ‘Greenies’ back home were against this renewable power source and locals used to complain that they made too much noise as the giant blades swished around. Clearly the locals living in the town on one of the hillsides of this valley had either lost the battle for the installation of the wind turbines or perhaps they couldn’t hear the swishing. Whatever was the reason it was great to see this excellent source of renewable energy in full force.

The road started to climb as we passed Tarifa on the A48 and although the horizon to our right was hazy we could first make out a very large oil tanker heading west and then as our eyes adjusted to the haze......there was Africa! Morocco was just a short distance away and tantalisingly close for a visit by the BBA V3.

At the summit of the road we took a stop at a lookout and joined the United Nations of number plates stopped there to take in the scene.

Then it was on and as we started our descent ‘The Rock’ came into view standing out boldly in the haze.

The traffic volumes built up as we entered the town of Algeciras and came across the unusual situation of traffic lights on a divided road with cross traffic, something we cannot recall encountering before. Why the authorities had not put a roundabout in to allow the cross traffic we are not sure but they definitely from the BBA V3 experience of what we reckon are’ 5632’ roundabouts we have encountered, they work better than traffic lights for flow.

There are two options for parking to visit Gibraltar. One is to drive into the territory which means going through customs and immigration in a vehicle and we had read this can take time. The alternative is to take a park on the side of the road that leads to the Rock, give the Spanish city of La Linea de la Concepcion(there we go with another far too long place name)a couple of Euros for car parking and walk into Gibraltar.

We chose the latter and it only took a few minutes and we were pushing our passports into the reader at the border and the next minute we were in a little bit of Blighty away from mother England.

After you leave the immigration area you come across what must be one of the weirdest ways of walking into a city.

Ahead is a commercial airport and the only runway for aircraft to land on is in the path of walking and driving entry to the city!

Any danger to pedestrians is controlled by gates either side of the runway and we assume airport officials or police come down when an aeroplane is due to land or takeoff to ensure there are no accidents between planes and people. We would have like to see this in action but we guess that it is not a particularly busy airport although there was a British Airways 737 parked at the terminal when we left later in the day which must have arrived after we crossed the runway towards the city.

The city has a population of some 30,000 people mostly ex pat Brits and aside from the shopkeepers and those who run bars and restaurants the rest are involved in the administration and defence forces keeping an eye on the Straits of Gibraltar and what passes through.

The location is so strategic that even with heavy bombing and trying all they could, the Germans in WW2 could not dislodge the Brits from the Rock.

The first street name you come to after crossing the runway is Sir Winston Churchill Avenue. If you weren’t up with the play about where you were in the world you would be after seeing that famous name.

There is not a lot of flat land and what there is densely packed with apartment blocks for the locals to live in and a shopping precinct that ran for a good distance along the base of the Rock.

Passing through a tunnel we emerged into a yard area and as it was lunchtime we checked the menu of the first bar we came to, the Lord Nelson. It seemed quite appropriate to have lunch in an establishment with such an esteemed name and so we ordered up 2 Speckled Hen pints of beer (which we must say was served cold and not warm as you would expect in England) and a plate of nachos to share. Well, we sort of kept to a Spanish theme with the nachos but also gave in to the English with a Speckled Hen beer.

The shopping precinct was busy with tourists, probably mostly with the same idea as us, but we made our way steadily towards the cableway that for GBP12.50 will take you on a journey to the top of the Rock and back down again.

Along the way we couldn’t but help notice the cheap price of alcohol which clearly had little or no duty in the price and we resolved to but a bottle of vodka to replace the supply that had run out the other day.

The ride up on the cableway was quick and we got to the top in 6 minutes although the speed of the car wasn’t that perceptible as we were on it.

At the top we were greeted by the local troop of macaque monkey’s and despite there being notices at the office at the bottom of the cableway, on the cable car itself and also as you step out at the top not to feed the monkey’s, it was disappointing to see how stupid adult humans can be by feeding them everything from bread rolls to all sorts of things in a packaged lunch someone had been careless with. They are in essence wild animals and by feeding them they will become more aggressive to obtain food which in itself endangers the visitors off the cable cars.

Aside from this, they were fascinating to watch and it made a change to observe them in the open rather than behind bars in a zoo.

The views from the top were fantastic and we couldn’t have got a better day to be here as the haze whilst not clearing completely had diminished to make the view towards Africa much clearer than earlier in the day when we had first seen it from the road.

We spent an hour or so taking in the views and being mesmerised by the almost vertical drop to the ocean on the seaward side of the Rock.

We still had a short distance to our apartment for the night up the coast and also our car park meter would expire at 5pm so we rejoined the cable car and headed back to the bottom.

We couldn’t resist a quick visit into Marks and Spencer to see if they had a food section to their store and weren’t disappointed when we found they had. And they had English prepared chilled meals which we mulled over before purchasing a shepherd’s pie to be cooked in the microwave when we got to our destination. And we got our bottle of vodka for GBP5 which was a real bargain.

Our apartment was located about 15km further up the coast in what essentially was a golfing village off the main highway towards Malaga.

The apartment was near one of the two or three golf courses that we passed and from it we had a peep of the Med from our patio balcony. The balcony face east so breakfast on the patio was going to be unresistable.

After our tasty dinner we took a walk across the golf course and for part of it through an ingenious tunnel at grass level which meant you were out of the way of golf balls being driven towards the 7^th green.

We were fortunate to catch the sunset with various shades of red on the Rock before it went a silvery colour after the sun had gone altogether.

We resolved with such a wonderful sunset to view on the Rock that we would return for the sunrise in the morning in the prospect that the colours would be as spectacular to see.

PS video available on YouTube

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Comments

[Kj]

Flags again
Didn't realise Gibraltar had its own flag....did you see any flying?