Our Spanish Hibernation 3:0

Having always enjoyed the opening scenes of the James Bond movie, The Living Daylights, I have quite a fixed view in my head of Gibraltar. This week, finally got to see it for myself. Much as there were no jeeps barrelling down the hill with 007 clinging to the roof, I did manage to walk some of that route and marvel again to myself the amazing stuntwork.

Along with my brother, sister and nephew (who are on a week long visit to Malaga), I jumped on an early coach from the centre of Malaga for the two hour drive to the famous rock.

Reaching the border, everyone filed off the bus and into passport control to be stamped out of Spain. A brisk walk and we were in another immigration office and stamped into Gibraltar – well UK I guess! We repeated all this five hours later and this seemed to go very smoothly both ends of the day.

Gibraltar is an unusual place. The whole “Britishness” thing is a bit lost on me. I can’t work out who it’s for or why it’s needed. Fish and Chips, red phone and post boxes and Marks & Spencer – is that what the rest of the world thinks makes us Brits so British?

Anyway, the highlight of a visit has to be taking yourself up to the top of the rock. You can walk up, but we took the cable car. It was a very smooth ride and despite the low cloud, spectacular. You can walk higher up, explore various treacherous looking paths, enjoy a skywalk or simply just take in the view. It is quite a stunning vista in each direction, even on such an overcast day. Apparently, on a clear day you can see mountains in North Africa.

The reserve at the top of the rock is a protected area and very well looked after. The real guardians of this territory, though are the legendary resident Barbary Apes. These fellas have so much personality and we got to see many of them. They come in all shapes and sizes. My hurried iPhone snaps didn’t do them justice, but fortunately my sister, Marion is much more patient taking photos on her phone. I have included one of hers here.