Gibraltar

Gibraltar.  The first stop on our cruise after leaving Barcelona. 

So what comes to mind?  Well, The Rock itself for starters.

And its cheeky monkey population.

Gibraltar is similar to Guernsey, a crown dependency with its own currency linked to the British Pound.  

It's basically a rock at the end of the Spanish mainland and Morocco is a few miles away on the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar.  On a clear day Morocco can be seen - this was not such a day.

Because of its close proximity to Spain its sovereignty has been disputed over the centuries.  A referendum was held some years ago to vote on whether this little country's population wished to remain British or become part of Spain.  The populace voted to remain.

We took a taxi (mini bus) trip up The Rock, as the queue for the cable car up there was over an hour's wait.  And life and cruising are both too short for that kind of queue eh?

The view from the bottom of The Rock, looking out to Spain.

We visited a beautiful cave set in the mountainside.

You can get a better look at the cave's majesty in the little video clip at the end of this post.   It's really quite beautiful.

Then we carried on further up to the mountain.

We stopped at the monkeys' canteen.  The idea is that feeding them daily will stop them harassing visitors for food.

That's the theory.

So when you're standing on a mountain precipice,  looking down on a sheer drop to the sea.

And there's nothing but a shallow edge of rock between you and the beautiful sea hundreds of feet below.

You do NOT want one of these muscly things leaping on your back and forcing you to stumble whilst standing on said precipice.

Which is what happened to TP!

The monkey must have thought he had food in his rucksack.   

So much for the clever monkey canteen idea.

Fortunately, the monkey pushed TP so that he stumbled in my direction and not over the edge of the mountain.  And all was well.  But you can imagine the bollocking  the stiff reprimand I gave my mountain goat for standing on that precipice!

Today's Tip:

Conduct a swift risk assessment before positioning yourself at the top of The Rock of Gibraltar!

And here's another view from that near-accident spot.  

You can just about see the string of mini-buses weaving their way along the only road, just one vehicle wide and with a sheer drop to the side.  I'm glad I only became aware of how sheer that drop was when I looked at my pics in the safety of my cabin some hours later! 

But the views were worth the hairy trip.

Here's the airport runway.

To the north of the runway is Spain.  That's how close.

It was an exhilarating excursion, that's for sure!

We also visited a huge cave complex housing cannon used a few centuries ago to protect this little piece of Britain, but the photos came out too dark to include here. 

As we sailed away, we saw that The Rock had been shrouded in cloud all day, which clearly explained why we had been unable to see Morocco from up top.

It looked surreal, like a spaceship had landed on top.  Or The Rock had been clumsily redacted from the view.

And here's my little two minute video summary of my visit.

I'll try to put together little clips with each travel post. 

I hope my posts will give you a flavour for the places I visited, and things to avoid - like a precipice in a monkey playground!

I hope you enjoyed your visit to Gibraltar;  join me soon for my next port of interest.

A la perchoine,

Mary x