Top of the Rock

When I visited Gibraltar 13 years ago I was a bit sniffy about the place.

In truth I don’t remember a great deal apart from the fact that we arrived in port on a cruise ship. After a hurried breakfast we disembarked and walked to Main Street, the narrow pedestrianised thoroughfare, which was crowded and seemed (to me at least) a bit grubby.

It didn’t help that our brief port-of-call coincided with the delivery, to the Department of Health in London, of a petition signed by 250,000 people opposed to plain packaging of tobacco.

The petition was part of Forest’s submission to the UK Government’s public consultation on the issue and six weeks earlier the closing date had been extended by four weeks, which threw a spanner into the works because it meant I was going to be away, at sea, when the new deadline came around.

Thankfully the delivery went according to plan but it was stressful because had anything gone wrong it would have been catastrophic in terms of our campaign, and an enormous waste of money.

Anyway, as soon as I got the message that the petition had been delivered safely, I retired to a bar on Main Street where I issued a press release to the UK media with the glad tidings. That apart, I remember very little about our time ashore and it certainly didn’t encourage me to make a return visit.

Fast forward to last Saturday and this time I arrived by air, courtesy of British Airways, after my original EasyJet flight had been cancelled 48 hours earlier due to industrial action by French air traffic controllers.

The first thing to say is: Gibraltar airport is my idea of a perfect airport. Small but perfectly formed, it sits in the shadow of the Rock and within minutes of disembarking we were collecting our luggage in the modern air-conditioned terminal. From there it was a very short walk (in bright sunshine) to the taxi rank.

There are three departure gates in the ‘new’ terminal (which was opened in two stages in 2011 and 2012) but even when two flights were leaving within minutes of one another – as happened on Wednesday – the bright and spacious departure lounge didn’t feel crowded because there were more than enough seats for every passenger.

As far as I can tell however there are only a handful of flights to and from Gibraltar each day. BA fly from Heathrow; EasyJet from Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Gatwick.

But to give you the best idea of Gibraltar International Airport, consider this: the two BA staff who checked in our luggage were the same people who checked our passports and boarding passes at the departure gate.

But I digress. The reason for my second visit to the Rock was to see an old school friend who moved here at the start of the year. I arrived, as I say, last Saturday, and after dropping off my luggage at his sixth floor apartment overlooking King’s Wharf Quay, we embarked on what in our younger days would have been a pub crawl.

In our sixties it could best be described as a leisurely stroll with just two pit stops (both wine bars) until we reached Little Bay Bar and Restaurant, an award-winning restaurant known for its Indian tapas in an area called Ocean Village.

Over the next few days we ticked off the tourist attractions I hadn’t seen on my previous visit (ie all of them!). These included the ‘top of the Rock’ walk (which we reached via cable car) with its monkeys, caves, and magnificent views – the Bay of Gibraltar on one side, the Mediterranean on the other. Morocco, remarkably, is only seven miles across the famous Strait and was clearly visible.

On the way down we also visited the World War II caves (there are said to be 38 miles of tunnels on the Rock but only 35 miles of roads) but we found time too to go off piste where there were several little gems – the Garrison Library, for example.

We visited Queensway Quay Marina, a short walk from my friend’s apartment and reminiscent of Miami and even the Cayman Islands (apart from the cannons, above), the peaceful and poignant Trafalgar Cementary (where sailors killed in the Battle of Trafalgar are buried), and Catalan Bay, a former fishing village on the eastern side of the Rock.

We also visited Spirit of the Rock, a micro gin distillery founded six years ago, where we sampled six historic gins (without tonic or ice) as part of the Gibraltar Gin Experience.

On my fourth and final day we got a bus to Europa Point, a new development that features the home of Europa Point FC, and the most southerly mosque in Europe. On the way back we hopped off the bus to have lunch at the Rock Hotel, where past guests have included Winston Churchill, Errol Flynn, Alec Guinness, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Peter O’Toole.

Last but not least, my visit concluded with the discovery of another little treasure – El Kasbah, a tiny Moroccan restaurant in the old town.

In short, I have completely revised my opinion of Gibraltar which I had previously dismissed as an over-crowded garrison town with little to recommend it apart from the importance of its location overlooking, and therefore controlling, the Strait of Gibraltar.

That was unfair. Based on this trip, Gibraltar is a garrison town but I didn’t see a single person in military uniform. Main Street was nicer than I remember, for the most part neither grubby nor crowded, apart from an influx of cruise passengers on two of the four days I was there.

In fact there were times, in the evenings especially, when I wondered where everyone was, it was so quiet.

In truth, four or five days is probably enough to see most of what is worth seeing. There were a few things, like the Moorish Castle (which was closed), that I didn’t get to see, but I saw most of the principal attractions, and as described above we also visited some interesting places that were slightly off the beaten track but always within easy walking distance of the centre.

The climate is similar to southern Spain, but I’m told it can get windy at times, causing flights to be diverted to Malaga in Spain, a two-hour drive away.

Talking of which, you may be aware that an EU-UK agreement – five years in the making – has finally been reached that should put Gibraltar’s relationship with Spain on a better and more secure footing.

When it was announced a few weeks some argued that the British Government was ‘surrendering Gibraltar’ after agreeing to EU passport controls. The Gibraltarians I spoke to, including local businessmen and retailers, were largely positive about the agreement, believing that it will attract more visitors and more business to the Rock.

It is thought that in time more airlines will fly to Gibraltar from other parts of Europe, bringing more passengers; and direct flights from Gibraltar to Morocco and other parts of North Africa might be a possibility. Likewise a renewal of ferry services to Morocco.

Before Gibraltar becomes a genuine holiday destination however it will need more hotels and I suspect it will have to overcome the military reputation that is both its strength and weakness.

Historically the story of Gibraltar as a strategic military location going back centuries is a fascinating one, but will that appeal to visitors from Britain and other countries who are more interested in the sun, sea and sand that is available in Spain and Portugal?

Either way, I will watch with interest.

PS. As an aside, Gibraltarians (ie natives of Gibraltar) tend to fall into two groups, liguistically. The majority are English speakers who seem to talk with a southern English or London accent, and those who sounded (to my ears) as if they were speaking Spanish.

In reality they are speaking Llanito which is described as a ‘specifically Gibraltarian dialect, an amalgamation of English and Spanish laced with words from other languages such as medieval Genoese, Hebrew, Maltese and Portuguese’.

Into that mix you may hear actual Spanish, as spoken by the 20,000 Spanish workers who cross the border every day to work in Gibraltar. (The number who live on the Rock is 38,000.)