On October 12, Barb & I travelled west from the Itrabo/Almuñecar region of southern Spain, driving the Brunborg’s new-to-them Ford through pissing rain, as our Canadian friends are wont to say, and transporting Tove to the Malaga airport so that she could return to Norway for a post-operation checkup of an eye that had been treated for glaucoma.  After dropping her off we continued west in order to visit Gibraltar.  We parked in the Spanish city of La Linea and walked across the border to Gibraltar, where we engaged a tour guide. There was a delay after we entered the van, since one of seven scheduled daily flights was using the airstrip that crosses perpendicularly the only road that enters the crowded British territory of Gibraltar.

Our tour took us up precipitous one-way roads with stops to see St. Michael’s Cave, the Siege Tunnel, a monument for the Pillars of Hercules with a vista southward toward Africa, which miraculously was visible owing to the cessation of the rain.  We also got a glimpse of the exterior of the ancient Moorish Castle as we drove by.  The tour’s turn-around point was near the top of 1,398 ft high monolith, where we spent some time with one of the sub-bands of the 300 Barbary macaques that populate the territory.  Our tour ended back in the city of Gibraltar, where we had a late lunch before beginning our long drive back to Itrabo.

Pillars of Hercules

According to Greek mythology when Hercules had to perform twelve labors, one of them (the tenth) was to fetch the Cattle of Geryon of the far West and bring them to Eurystheus; this marked the westward extent of his travels.   According to some Roman sources,while on his way to the garden of the Hesperides on the island of Erytheia, Hercules had to cross the mountain that was once Atlas. Instead of climbing the great mountain, Hercules used his superhuman strength to smash through it. By doing so, he connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and formed the Strait of Gibraltar. The two mountains created by the split taken together have since then been known as the Pillars of Hercules

The northern pillar is the Rock of Gibraltar and the southern pillar has been identified as Jebel Moussa (Musa) in Morocco, although a corresponding North African peak not being predominant, the identity of the southern Pillar has been disputed through history,with the other candidate being Monte Hacho in the Spanish city of Ceuta on the northern coast of Africa.

Galleries and Great Siege Tunnels

A unique feature of the Rock is its system of underground passages, known as the Galleries or the Great Siege Tunnels. The first of these was dug towards the end of the Great Siege of Gibraltar, which lasted from 1779 to 1783. The commander of the garrison throughout the siege was anxious to bring flanking fire on the Spanish batteries in the plain below the North face of the Rock.  He had a tunnel bored from a point above Willis’s Battery to communicate with the Notch, a natural projection from the North face. The plan was to mount a battery there. There was no intention at first of making embrasures in this tunnel, but an opening was found necessary for ventilation; as soon as it had been made a gun was mounted in it. By the end of the siege, the British had constructed six such embrasures, and mounted four guns.

The Galleries were a later development of the same idea and were finished in 1797. They consist of a whole system of halls, embrasures, and passages, of a total length of nearly 997 ft. From them, one may see a series of unique views of the Bay of Gibraltar, the isthmus, and Spain.

The Rock of Gibraltar is a monolithic promontory. It is a deeply eroded and highly faulted limb of an overturned fold. The sedimentary strata comprising the Rock of Gibraltar are overturned (upside down) with the oldest strata overlying the youngest strata.  Although the original geological formations were deposited during the early part of the Jurassic Period some 175-200 million years ago, their current appearance is due to far more recent events of about 5 million years ago. When the African tectonic plate collided tightly with the Eurasian plate, the Mediterranean became a lake that, over the course of time, dried up. The Atlantic Ocean then broke through the Strait of Gibraltar, and the resultant flooding created the Mediterranean Sea.

Today, the Rock of Gibraltar forms a peninsula jutting out into the Strait of Gibraltar from the southern coast of Spain. The promontory is linked to the continent by means of a sandy strip with a maximum elevation of about 10 ft. To the north, the Rock rises vertically from sea level up to 1,350 ft at Rock Gun Battery. The Rock’s highest point stands 1,398 ft above the strait at O’Hara’s Battery. The near-cliffs along the eastern side of the Rock drop down to a series of wind-blown sand slopes that date to the glaciations when sea levels were lower than today, and a sandy plain extended east from the base of the Rock. The western face, where the City of Gibraltar is located, is comparatively less steep. Calcite, the mineral that makes up limestone, dissolves slowly in rainwater. Over time, this process can form caves. For this reason the Rock of Gibraltar contains over 100 caves.

St. Michael’s Cave

St. Michael’s Cave, located halfway up the western slope of the Rock, is the most prominent and is a popular tourist attraction. The upper chamber has been turned into an auditorium illuminated with ever-changing colored lights.  Gorham’s Cave is located near sea level on the steep eastern face of the Rock. It is noteworthy because archaeological excavations in the cave have found evidence that Neanderthals used it as far back as 30,000 years ago.

Moorish Castle

The Moorish Castle is a relic of the Moorish occupation of Gibraltar, which lasted for 710 years. It was built in the year A.D. 711. The principal building that remains is the Tower of Homage, a massive building of brick and very hard concrete. The upper part of the tower housed the former occupants’ living apartments and Moorish bath.

Barbary Apes

The Barbary Macaques may have originated from an escape of North African animals transported to Spain; it is also possible that the original Gibraltar macaques are a remnant of populations that are known to have spread throughout Southern Europe during the Pliocene, up to 5.5 million years ago.

Second World War onwards

When World War II broke out in 1939, the authorities evacuated the civilian population to Morocco, the United Kingdom, Jamaica and Madeira so that the military could fortify Gibraltar against a possible German attack. By 1942 there were over 30,000 British soldiers, sailors, and airmen on the Rock. They expanded the tunnel system and made the Rock a keystone in the defense of shipping routes to the Mediterranean.