Traifa to Gibraltar

Our caravan travels to Gibraltar from Traifa was sort of a reverse trip. We needed a home base for the caravan so we could visit both Gibraltar and Morroco. Tarifa was were we settled on. Definitely two places we wanted to visit during this trip.

The drive from our camp site at Tarifa (south coast of Spain). It only took an hour to get to La Lina de la Concepcion and saved us moving the caravan twice in two days for our sightseeing. Hunger was forefront by this time and we were looking forward to getting to Gibraltar and some food. Parking was easy, and secure and seemed plentiful. Our underground car park cost about 10 euro for the day and a five minute walk saw us at the border runway (aka border), through immigration and on a bus to the township (aka miniature version of GB).

Brief History of Gibraltar

The Moors dominated Gibraltar for seven centuries. Spain controlled the Rock from 1462 until the early 1700s before Anglo-Dutch forces captured the territory in 1704 during the War of Spanish Succession.

In 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht ceded it permanently to Britain. Spain tried and failed to recapture Gibraltar during a series of bloody sieges in the 18th century.

The Tour of Gibraltar

In the main square we checked out some of the restaurants. English breakfast and fish and chips was popular and looked good. Traveling in Spain for the last four months we did miss some of the English staples. Unfortunitly not a good choice.  Probably not the best option, to many tourists. We just took it on the chin and put it down to experience and bought a Snickers at the supermarket to stop the hangries.

Ascending the Gibraltar rock by cable car wasn’t an option for us. We checked it out but It looked way too busy with long queues. Prices started at approx 50 English pounds each for the tour.   So no, we didn’t see the famous Monkeys.

A better option to see the rock was to take the local bus out to Trinity Lighthouse on the other side of the peninsula. This gave us a great little trip around Gibraltar with views from high coastal points along the way. From memory the bus cost a couple of pounds each.

The Rock and Marina

Back in town, we walked around the marina to see a cruse ship permanently anchored in the marina. Seems it was operating as a hotel and casino. At the marina we found a few nice looking restaurants, with interesting menus, found them just to late as we needed to head back towards the border.

When we reached the runway we were stopped by the runway lights and boom gate. This was to let British Airways plane land. There is a large duty-free store on the way back over the border.  Excellent opportunity to for us to buy my favorite Bushmills Irish whiskey. For Fabian, a one litre bottle of London dry gin, Both for 16 English pounds. TOTAL ! YAY!.  Great experience and well worth the effort.  The day… not just the duty free shopping 🙂

Interesting Links would be Gibraltar Tourist board and Trip Advisor. Our back to Home page

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