What you have to remember is that Gibraltar was, until fairly recently, a military base. It still has a small Royal Navy and RAF presence but it’s very much scaled back compared to what it used to be. In addition, Spain closed the border with Gibraltar in 1966 until 1982 and tried to stop UK aircraft flying through Spanish airspace into Gibraltar.

As a consequence of the above, it isn’t really a developed tourist destination, there isn’t that much to do beyond what I’ve already mentioned. I think that the best way to get there is to fly in, although there are only direct flights from England with British Airways and easyJet at the moment. The history and the novelty factor is what draws visitors and the mild climate most of the year.

I normally visit with a group of friends, we get a BA flight around mid-morning on a Saturday, as the flight departs from Heathrow Terminal 3, we get to surf a few lounges first before boarding. We get CE flights and once we land at Gib, walk to The Rock hotel, which takes about 40 minutes. After checking in and dumping any bags, we walk a further 30 minutes or so to Europa Point on the very southern tip of the peninsula for ice cream and to drink the beers that somehow found their way into our bags from the BA lounge (no, we didn’t remove them, a big boy must have hidden them in our bags and then run away). The views over to Africa are pretty good with the Atlas Mountains visible; sunsets are usually quite picturesque too.

Then back to The Rock to shower and change, down to the marina area for dinner and then back to The Rock bar for drinks. Next day after breakfast, we used to take the cable car up the Rock and walk down visiting all the attractions, ending in The Moorish Castle. Back to The Rock hotel to pick up bags and down to the marina area for lunch and drinks before walking over to the airport for the afternoon flight back to Heathrow. This year, we didn’t bother with the trip up the Rock and just had a relaxing morning before heading into town for lunch.

No point getting to the airport really early if you have hand baggage, we usually turn up around 20 minutes before gate closes, security is usually quiet then and the lounge isn’t really anything to write home about. The first couple of times we visited, we watched our aircraft arrive from behind the road barrier that closed off traffic and pedestrians from the runway and then walked across the runway to the airport.