I waited patiently for dawn, and got up early.

Laurie slept 12 hours, so I was outside the hotel when she finally texted me. I knew that she would be so full of energy, compared to me, that I decided to start tomorrow’s stage, and only afterwards do the Gibraltar touristing with whatever energy remained. I’m glad I did it in that order. Otherwise I would have worn myself out on the Rock and wouldn’t have started the Camino. Good thing, because Laurie did Gibraltar first and then also the Camino piece. Now I don’t have a head start for tomorrow! However, it turns out that she somehow walked about 14 km following a random Wikiloc trail (with a serious deviation from the route) to do the 8 km distance! So she was tired, too, after doing some big distance on Gibraltar.

The Camino…

I headed off for the official start at the Iglesia de Santiago. It was a concrete building with a cross atop, perhaps from the 1960s, closed, so no starting sello/stamp or spiritual moment to be had. Instead I stopped for a fresh bocadillo de jamón, cafe con leche and half a liter (big glass!) of fresh orange juice.

I walked on to the ocean, and dipped my hand in the foam, picking up a cute little shell. Nice view of the famous Rock.

Then walked back and north to the edge of La Linea, over a few km of scrub/monte, and re-entered urban development in San Roque. That was 12 km in total, 8 of which were the official route. It was reasonably well marked and pleasant, if you like this type of rather harsh surface, as I do on a nice day. This is Spain, not the soft greenness of the Pacific Northwest. I got an intercity bus back to La Linea.

Now tomorrow will only be 19 km, except for the ones we might spend on unplanned detours.

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is weird. In my mind it conjures up adventures in my childhood when my older brother R led me (we didn’t have other  playmates near our house) on participatory adventures. It was the late 1950s and the adventures were heavily influenced by British boys’ adventure books of the 1930s and 1940s. Anyway, places like Gibraltar and Algeciras were involved. My character was “Bob Victor.” Of course I had to be male because.. Well, because. R was 12-14 but I was only 8-10, so you know who was in charge. R is probably reading this blog right now, and he might be one of the many Anonymouses who comment!

Imagine the Point Roberts border crossing on steroids, then accommodate millions of pedestrian tourists, two languages (well, really only one counts), numerous wars over hundreds of years, and the final vestiges of the British Empire. All happening around (literally) the periphery of a huge rock! Take a densely populated city centre and business district, stretch it out and stick it on the side of the rock, and then firmly affix an international port and military establishment. Turn the huge rock into a “nature reserve” (after all, rocks are natural, especially with some sub-tropical vegetation and monkeys). You’ll need a cable car to the top, but British efficiency and order died in the 1970s, I think. There you have it – Gibraltar as I saw it today.

St Michael’s Cave would have been  geologically interesting, if you could see beyond the coloured light show. The Nerja Caves on the other side of Malaga were better, M!

If I hadn’t already walked about 20  km today on 4 hours of sleep, I probably would have gone on more of the trails. As it was, I didn’t even pretend to examine the military history.

Finally met up with Laurie for a delicious salad featuring mescluns and goat cheese, balanced by bacon  and crunchy deep fried chicken bits, along with the first but defo not the last red wine on this trip.