When I decided to add Gibraltar to this trip, my plan was to catch the cable car to the top look around a little bit and come back down…. maybe walking down. But then the Cable car went into maintenance and the options became an expensive “Taxi” tour or hire an e-bike. I chose the e-bike option and thank goodness I did, as the top of the rock was basically one giant taxi traffic jam after another.
My ride start by riding out across the airport runway, because well thats a thing you can do in Gibraltar. Then it went under the runway which is the “new” way to get around the airport which basically creates a border with spain. I rode down the eastern side of the Rock to Europa point which is the southern most tip. It was all pretty easy riding, with no real over exertion required.
But as i rounded the rock i started the climb to the highest point which was over 400m above sea level. I stopped at the Jews gate to pay the 30 pound entrance fee! Then contiunued up and stopped at Taxi traffic jam 1 which was St Michaels Cave. Thankfully cyclists can ride right to the entrance, where as the taxi’s parked further down the hill as they wouldn’t be able to turn around and get out otherwise. there was no way for the taxi’s to opvertake each other either. You just had to wait for all the ones further up to leave. The caves were a bit too gawdy for my liking, with multicoloured lighting and a show inside.
I continued towards the peak which is the location of O’Hara’s battery an old gun placement when Gibraltar was used to control access to the mediterranean. You could clearly see Africa from up here, but you could easily see it from ground level also. The Straight of Gibraltar is not that wide at all! I’d be lying if I said the bike did all the work, you definitely need some fitness to ride even an e-bike up steep hills. If you stopped it was often hard to get it going again, which meant a walk of shame to the next flatter bit to get started again.
I then head north across the top of the rock and encountered the only wild monkeys in all of Europe. Like all monekys living in proximity to humans, they’ve adapted to stealing and were more than capable of unzipping backpacks of idiots who thought it was cool they had a monkey on their backpack and thus got friends to take selfies all the while giving the monkey time to find something delicious and then run, mostly from other monkeys looking to steal some of the spoils. Of course monkeys also cause Taxi traffic jams!
The descent back down into the town was a lot of fun, a few hairpins to navigate and obviously once back in town, actual real traffic. Honestly it was an amazing and fun day and I’m now thinking i want an e-bike, but I also know I prob won’t use it much after the novelty wears off. A bit like my kayak hanging in my garage.
