We managed to stay an entire week in Gibraltar, which was no mean feat considering no camping is allowed there. It was something of a hostile environment right from the start, when going through border control, after showing our passports, another customs officer banged his fist on the bus for us to stop, and said, "so what's this, a caravan?" A bit of an absurd question, since it's fairly obvious we are not. Anyway, they let us through, and off we went to try to find a suitably covert spot to park up.
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| Parked between the building works & mosque |
The first noticeable thing about Gib was the amount of traffic, it's roads were incredibly busy with cars and mopeds flying about in all directions - surprising since it's relatively small and you could walk around it in a couple of hours. Maybe it's because of its tax free status - I presume new cars are cheaper there, as we saw many car showrooms; either that or Gib folk are just plain lazy (we did see more obese people there than in the rest of Europe). Parking is evidently a huge problem and every where you look there are towing and clamping signs.
The next most obvious thing was the extent of the building works going on. There were cranes and workmen everywhere, even at the very top of the Rock. Next year the Gibraltar Games are being held, which I'm sure must have incentivised a lot of the activity - there are two sports stadiums in progress and many apartments and hotels going up. They are also constructing the worlds largest wine vault inside the Rock itself, and claim that this state of the art facility could eventually house more than 850,000 bottles of wine; it's due to open this year, though it looked far from on its way to completion.
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| Nick at Europa Point Lighthouse |
The first place we parked at was Catalan Bay on the East side. Leading to the Bay we passed through an industrial area, home to a Holiday Inn, some grotty high rise flats, a multi storey carpark, car workshops and an enormous mountain of dirt, which must be where all the construction firms take their excavated earth. Catalan Bay, so named because it's is where many Catalan people settled in the eighteenth century, along with a large Genoese population, has the second biggest beach in Gibraltar. Apparently very popular and busy in summer, it felt rather desolate, with lots of litter and most of the cafes and restaurants were closed down. This location had the sheer face of the Rock looming over it, and after a certain time in the day, when the sun passed over to the West face of the rock there was no sunlight, which made it feel quite oppressive and chilly. We parked in a large free carpark and were reassured to see a few camper vans which looked like they were bedded in for the winter. We approached one van to be welcomed by an eccentric elderly Englishman, who's camper looked like the messy interior of an ancient tool box, everything covered in oil and grease and objects everywhere - he came out wielding a fork and said it was fine to park there until April, but please could we not park next to him! We were happy to give him the wide berth he required. After getting settled we took the half hour walk into the town centre. I can't honestly say I liked Gibraltar town; it was a bit brash - people trying to coax you into perfume shops with free samples, loads of duty free goods, and hence lots of people smoking carrying cartons of cigarettes. We strolled along to the Marina, and although the setting was pleasant, we were disappointed at the high price of a glass of wine, screw top at that!
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| Beautiful sunsets at Europa Point |
That night we were woken up by boy racers screeching around the carpark and blasting their music until the early hours, so the following day, determined not to be defeated, we decided to explore the other side of the Rock. We headed off and wound round and up, the bus struggling a little as we chugged along to Europa Point, a far prettier location on the West facing side, and from where we could enjoy beautiful sunsets with Morocco on the horizon to our left and Spain just opposite, to our right. We parked beside a large mosque, and I enjoyed hearing the call to prayer ringing out twice a day. It was warmer, sunnier and much better there and we spent the following week exploring the old streets of Gibraltar, learning about its history - highlights of which included discovering a waterfall and spotting some of the famous resident monkeys. At Europe Point, there was also a huge amount of building work going on, and by 9am it was a hive of activity with the noise of construction tools and workmen.
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| View from high up the Rock |
We revised our initial low opinion somewhat and concurred there were some good, or at least interesting points about the place. However, the negative points niggled me too much to want to return there a second time. Certain things really annoyed me about Gibraltar, such as it had a horribly bureaucratic, big brother feel to it. On Monday we were visited by three customs officers to be told we could not stay in our vehicle overnight as it was forbidden to stay in camper vans. This struck me as crazy, since there was ample parking, free at this location. There were several other EU campers there who were not approached and I reckon this was because the customs couldn't be doing with speaking to foreigners, but clocked that we were English due to our registration plate, so came to bother us. The male officer was friendly enough and happy to accept our explanation that we were waiting for a part for the bus (that old one), but the moody female officer was determined to stamp her authority and questioned us about Nina, saying her breed might not be allowed on Gibraltar - again I had checked in advance, and knew she was allowed.
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| The unexpected waterfall |
A few days later a police car screeched over, parking at an angle in front of the bus, like Bodey & Doyle; the officer demanded to see our passports and vehicle documents, which seemed ridiculous since we had shown them coming in. In every other place we have been we have been positively and warmly welcomed - but no such niceties in Gibraltar. Other niggles included the no dog policy on public transport, meaning that we had to go everywhere on foot - we clocked up over forty miles of walking during the week. We enjoy walking, but trekking back to the bus, uphill, with shopping is hard work! On the subject of shopping, it was nice to visit some English shops, but we found it more expensive than the UK and both Spain and Portugal. Furthermore, it seems the Gibs stick a fee on whatever they can - a pound to use the public toilet, a fiver to go to the top of the Rock (we only went so far), an entry fee for all historical attractions, e.g, the museum and the caves; it was even a fiver for a portion of chips to take away (no thank you!!).
By Friday, we felt we had seen all we wanted and decided to bade farewell to Little Britain and continue our trip into Spain. Just over the border in La Linea we had sourced a good launderette, so that was the next stop. I was tasked with doing the washing whilst Nick's job was to empty the loo and top up the tank with water. Later that day a series of unfortunate events unfolded...
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| Our current view at Torreguadiaro |
In brief, the bus got stuck down a narrow street, causing Nick to abandon it and arrange to meet me on foot. I misunderstood his directions and ended up lost carrying a ton of clean laundry - we eventually found each other. Next, I had to direct the traffic at a four way junction just as Spain was returning to work from its siesta, while Nick manoeuvred the bus backwards from where it was stuck. Half and hour later, at Lidls I believed I had lost my bank card, cancelled it, and swiftly found it again, but could not un-cancel it, and now have to work out how to get my replacement one that will go to my mail box in the UK.
Leaving Lidls, the next disaster was when the back doors of the bus flew open, cars honked to alert us to the situation, resulting in an emergency stop and pull over to rectify the problem - thankfully nothing fell out. The final insult occurred as we approached that evening's destination, a pleasant aire beside the beach in Torreguadiaro. A speed bump snuck up on us unexpected and as the bus flew over it, everything jumped off the shelves, including a bottle of cooking oil, spilling and running down the entire length of the bus, a two litre bottle of mineral water exploded at the other end soaking everything in its radius, books tumbled down, a light bulb smashed, it looked like a mini earthquake had hit us. No sooner had we stopped to inspect the damage, when the bus started rolling, the handbrake not having been fully executed. As Nick leapt to its attention we hit a curb, impeding further disaster, and came to an abrupt stop.
That night we went for a very tasty curry, and like you do (unless it's really bad), were able to have a good laugh about everything that had happen, thanking our lucky stars that things could've been worse. One thing's for sure, there's never a dull moment on the road.
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