Saturday 15th March 2025, 2.45pm (day 4,951)

Gibraltar is my home for the next few days. I have been here once before, in 1991 — my “Inter-Rail Summer”, aged 21. Then, one could only enter the territory by walking across the airport runway, and this is still the case, as seen here. Presumably one gets a decent amount of notice before they close it, but let’s hope that one’s electric vehicle doesn’t run out of juice halfway across. The huge lump of limestone that is The Rock has always been a landmark, and a fortress, and the peninsula on which it and the city stands is now one of Britain’s last remaining outposts of Empire: an Overseas Territory that is sort of still part of Europe, only not. A gatepost to the Mediterranean beyond.