What hasn't been written about Gibraltar? I'm not going to try very hard. And why compete with the slogan associated with a major insurance company since the 19th Century?
The Rock is unmistakable. Below, in the 1950s, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier passes into the Mediterranean. The white area on Gibraltar is the old water catchment.
I had a great time clambering along some isolated and precipitous paths. This is south towards Africa, a somewhat different view of the famous profile.
And this is north into Spain.
Many of the old defences are easily accessible.
The 9.2" guns could send a shell 29,600 yards. The straits are 25,500 yards wide, so it's easy to see how British held the entrance to the Mediterranean.
I found a long abandoned bunker dominating the harbour.
Near the harbour is a small cemetery.
In it lie two who died in the Battle of Trafalgar. Most were buried at sea, but some of the wounded were brought to Gibraltar and later passed away. I arrived a week or so after Remembrance Day. Hmmm ... I think they misspelled 'received'.
This is one of the wretched Barbary Apes, said to be symbols of the Rock, and a more self-satisfied and irritating lot I've never seen. Their greatest pleasure seems to be in tormenting tourists, which, come to think of it, is not a pastime confined to Gibraltar.
In Ulysses, James Joyce’s Molly Bloom lost her virginity to Lieutenant somebody-or-other on the vegetation beneath the walls of the Moorish Castle.
I searched a bit and the ground cover looked decidedly uncomfortable. That said, Joyce never got to Gibraltar.
