I loved Gibraltar! It was definitely the highlight of my holiday. Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory, bordered by Spain and surrounded on the other sides by sea. It was captured by Anglo Dutch forces during the war of Spanish Succession in 1704 and ceded to Great Britain in perpetuity under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
We stayed at a campsite on the Spanish side and from this beach you can see the rock of Gibraltar in the distance.
To get there we drove to the port on the Spanish side in La Linea de la Concepción and parked there. Then we bought tickets for the shuttle bus which take you to the cable car station and include the tickets for that too. I was very excited when going through passport control to get a stamp in my passport! I hate Brexit but this is the ONLY thing I am happy about, as it's been sad all these years never getting passport stamps when travelling around within Europe.
Driving through Gibraltar it was so fun to see all the signs written in English, and to be able to speak English everywhere too was such a novelty!
We had heard many reviews that said there were always long queues for the cable car, but we had no problems whatsoever and went straight up. The views are amazing from the top. Behind me is the direction where the beach above was (right hand side) and you can see those tall apartment blocks from the beach photo.
Looking down over the main part of Gibraltar town, the ports and the airport, whose runway juts out into the sea and you have to cross to get to the Spanish border. Beyond the airport is Spain.
It looks to me that they are reclaiming land from the sea on the right hand side.
Barbary macaque monkeys, originally from Morocco but present in Gibraltar since before the British captured the rock in 1704. There are loads of these monkeys up on the higher part of the rock. They have a tendency to steal things, like food and bags, from unsuspecting tourists so we were quite wary of them!
They were a lot of fun though and great to observe from close up. Lots of youngsters too which were very cute!
Looking across the Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco in North Africa. We were so lucky we had a clear sunny day.
There is a glass walkway called the Skywalk which juts out over the mountain edge. I didn't have any problems walking to the far end to pose for a photo. K got so far, to take this photo of me. I don't think my brother went very far onto it! I think he and I have switched places from when we were kids, I remember being terrified when he stood right beside a river bank as I got vertigo on his behalf! (Remember how I braved going on the Devon Eye but both he and Keith refused?)
Looking through the glass wall down to Sandy Bay, which is on the other side of the rock from the main town. There are only a few places with beaches as the rest of Gibraltar is either rock, or very built up due to the lack of space. Even so, this beach has been made with tons of imported sand.
St Michael's Cave. I went in but then saw all the steps so gave it a miss as my legs were already tired from walking up and down paths with steps but what I did see was quite spectacular. There is a large area within the caves that is set up as a theatre.
To be continued....
This is the last post so you can breath a sigh of relief!
The house is starting to resemble Frankenstein's monster! These openings were mortared in with a special mortar - the plan is they leave it like this for 18 months - 2 years to see if there is any more movement/cracking. If there isn't, then the walls can be repaired and the facade painting can begin, and the bedroom cracks repaired and repainted. No idea what happens if any more cracks appear!
The path was repaired - though I am a bit peeved that that middle section is sticking out - the stones should have been laid with long straight ends on the path edge. Oh well.
We had planned to sow grass seed this autumn, but after heavy rain at the end of August some grass and loads of weeds grew back and filled in the gaps! At least weeds are green.
K has since added more gravel up to the level of the path and I can put plants in pots there next summer to make it look a bit more interesting.
What work? You would never know anything had happened here, apart from the Frankenstein's monster look all over the facade (as some wisecrack on facebook likened the 'scars' to!).
Back to normal. Ish.
The old step had to be moved to lay the concrete and the guys made us some new steps - much better as the previous one was just one tall step which was hard work on my knees, and now I have two steps! K has since painted them.
I really thought that the cats might have been peturbed by all the noise and disturbance going on but they seem to have just totally ignored it all - this is how they spent most of the hot summer, shagged out on the tiles!
I brought my potting tidy upstairs so I could do some repotting this summer, and Harry thought it made a nice cat basket!
What a daft boy!
That thankfully is the end of that, until the parts of the walls that were opened up get repaired and the facade painted in about 18 months time. I just hope nothing more cracks and that the foundation work was successful! I've noticed that the cracks in our bedroom didn't open wider this summer like they normally do, so that is a good sign!
It was time to start digging around three sides of the house to install a concrete 'pavement' - laid in order for rain to run away from the house and so the foundations would stay dryer. This will help the soil around the foundations from going through the usual cycles of wet in winter and bone dry in summer.
Our gravel had been originally laid over a liner, but a fair amount of 'soil' had built up over the years. Luckily everything was dry so there was no mud involved, just dust!
Preparing for the concrete to be poured - I found it fascinating all the layers here, geotextile then gravel, then clear plastic, then reinforcing steel. Only a ditch on the outside would have concrete to the full depth to reinforce the concrete path.
More fun and games was all this cutting into the walls where any cracks had been (though we don't recall seeing cracks in half of these places! Guess the experts see things that we ordinary folk don't).
Out the front. The path got a bit destroyed in a few places from the digger but the workmen said they would repair it.
On the right is a great big skip for all the dug out soil - it's the kind that is winched up onto a truck bed. I think we had three skips here in all. By the way Mary Moho went to spent several weeks on the forecourt of the repair garage in the village (where she is known) and we paid them a small amount for being so kind.
Round the back of the house ready for the concrete.
When the garage side was started an old septic tank was found!
All they could do was fill it in and take out any unnecessary pipework - luckily way too much gravel had been delivered for the pavement preparations so they filled it in with that.
Some of my crazy paving path looking a bit worse for wear!
The concrete arrives! We had to go out for a few hours which was annoying.
Round the back of the house.
When we came home the back and front had been finished but they were ready to lay the concrete on the garage side, so I got to watch that.
Dust! This is from cutting out the cracks in the facade with (I think) an angle grinder - it made a tremendous amount of dust. They cleaned it up afterwards. (I'm annoyed that both lavenders from the original front bed that were dug up and repotted died on me - that's one bottom left).
Scaffolding goes up to deal with the higher up cracks, over nice dry concrete. The guys shovelled gravel back in place in the front and the back, leaving only the garage side for us to do (very nice of them as that was not part of their job).
To be continued....
