Little Brit in Little Britain, Gibraltar

Martin crossing the runway into Gibraltar

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This unexpected little bit of England in Spain was a surprisingly welcome break. Everything's in English. Everyone speaks English. And there are things like Fish and Chip shops, and red post boxes and Marks and Spencer's! Bloody marvellous. Couldn't be better timing for a restock on knickers and Cadbury's! Plus, it was heaven to speak full-on English and not feel even remotely guilty! Yippee.

I have to say, I don't think I've ever entered a 'country' (or whatever) by walking across its RUNWAY, because that's exactly how one enters Gibraltar! Pedestrians and car/bus traffic are halted so that planes can land and take off. Bizarre, but makes perfect sense as this is pretty much the only flat bit of 'the Rock'.

Martin and Michelle at the top of The Rock

The Gib, as it's also known, is an interesting geographical feature - a massive rock jutting out into the Mediterranean from the Spanish coastline connected by the flat airport-bit.  Legend says that Hercules pushed apart the continents of Africa and Europe to create the passage between the Atlantic and Mediterranean, with two big rocks on either side to mark the strait - Gibraltar being one. 

Of course, you can't go to Gibraltar and not go up to the top, so we walked up (instead of cheating and taking the cable car).  Weaving our way up the tiny STEEP streets, we thankfully stopped every once in a while to check out the Moorish castle ruins and battlements, and the Great Siege Tunnels. in 1772 when Britain and Spain were fighting for this strategic position in the Med, the British dug about 33 miles of tunnels with windows and holes for cannons. The tunnels continued to be used for defence in  subsequent different sieges and battles with the Spanish.  33 miles is crazy considering that Gibraltar is only about 3 miles long to start with.

Finally at the top (or at least the middle of Gib's three peaks), the views were amazing. Basically, the peak is a knife edge with cliffs straight down to the Mediterranean one direction, and then open steep-ish slopes the other way with views over the Atlantic and Algeciras (in Spain) in the other direction.  As Algeciras is a major industrial area and shipping port, there are lots of huge ships and tankers in Gibraltar Bay heading in/out of the Atlantic.  Crazy. You also get a good view of the airport/runway that we walked across to enter the country.

Martin making friends over Gibraltar Bay

The tourists are not the only ones to enjoy the views - there is a  large colony of macaques who inhabit the area.  Macaques are tail-less monkeys and they certainly seem used to humans, but I wouldn't put it past them to be aggressive.  One actually hopped on a guy's head and started picking and nibbling bits out of his hair.   When Martin visited with Parker 10 years ago, one cute little guy snatched at their bag of sandwiches, but not getting away with anything.

The Concert Hall inside St. Michael's Cave

One of the highlights was also St. Michael's Cave.  This naturally formed cave was pretty impressive with some huge features.  It was so big that they actually have a concert hall set up inside and have different shows throughout the year.  The acoustics are pretty fantastic in there, but unfortunately, they played the same song (Pachibel's Kanon in D) over and over and over again. 
Time to get back to the difficulties of a language barrier, and we left our little bit of Britain to set back to Tarifa.   *Mush