Gonna leave Gibraltar tomorrow so we better go up the big rock today. We got up late and played guitars for an hour before taking the curtain down to look at the busy street we’ve been camping on for the past 3 nights. I’ve got into the habit of checking the weather outside by looking at how many Amps the solar panels are doing – anything over 4A in the morning usually means a hot day. It was nearly 5.

You need a good breakfast if you’re going to walk

I put some Jaco on (breakfast always includes music) and started work on a 6-egg mega-omelette whilst Ross prepared a pair of Gins using a prize lemon we borrowed from a tree near Orgiva.

How to walk the Gibraltar rock

There was no obvious way to walk up the rock but ended up finding a good route after some exploring. We walked down Europa road passing the cable car office and big car park on the right and carried on up the hill passing the ‘Rock Hotel’. There is an old derelict casino on the left where the road splits into two. We went up the road to the left (Engineers rd.) – this is where it gets steep. Once on this road we just followed it, zigzagging up the rock, occasionally cutting a few corners.

I don’t know if this is the normal way to walk up here but it was a good route with great views of the Atlas Mountains half way up. You can carry on all the way to the Moorish Castle and the tunnels for a complete tour of the rock.

The monkeys

It was getting dark quickly and we hadn’t even seen the wild monkeys yet, let alone the tunnels or caves. We started to head back down the rock via these stairs. It turned out that the stairs lead directly to the ‘Apes den’.

The monkeys are the only tailless monkey species, called the Barbary Macaque, native to North Africa. I was surprised at how friendly/tame they are.

Then it got pretty dark so we went back to the van. There’s loads of other things on this rock to see but just the view alone is probably worth the walk.

looking to the north west over Gibraltar