Compass

Upper Rock

All routes

Summit Circle

A closed loop from the Top Station: Signal Hill, the Skywalk, Douglas Path ridge, St Michael's Cave, Windsor Bridge, Apes' Den, then a 185 m climb back up to where you started. That climb is the whole difficulty of the route. Do it clockwise so you take it while you're still cool, or bail out downhill at Devil's Gap if your legs say no. 2.78 km, roughly 3 hours. Short on time? Skip Signal Hill and Douglas Path and you're looking at 2 km and about 2 hours.

Two-page notebook panorama of the Rock of Gibraltar from the west: the sheer north face on the left, the summit ridge running south and dropping to the low tail at Europa Point, the town along the shoreline, sailing boats in the bay and the Spanish coast as a pale band on the right. The Summit Circle is drawn over it as a dotted ink line with five numbered stops: the cable car top station, Signal Hill, the Skywalk, St Michael's Cave and the Apes' Den, listed in order underneath.
  1. 1Cable Car Top Station
  2. 2Signal Hill
  3. 3Skywalk
  4. 4St Michael's Cave
  5. 5Apes' Den
  6. then 185 m back up
Distance
2.78 km
Climb
247 m up, 247 m down
On foot
3 h
Effort
Moderate · steps

Take this walk offline.

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The walk

A true loop from the Top Station, and the best route if you have three hours off a ship.

Before you set off

  • Two litres each in summer. The only water on the route is at St Michael's Cabin, halfway round.

  • The gates shut at 19:00 in summer and 18:00 in winter, and no path is lit. Work backwards from closing time.

  • Feeding a macaque is illegal and carries fines up to £4,000. Keep food out of sight and bags closed.

What you will actually see

seven stops. The five with drawings are the ones worth stopping properly for. The rest are short: a minute of narration to keep you walking, and a reason to look at something.

  1. 1

    Cable Car Top Station

    385 m approx.

    Africa is fourteen kilometres away and visible; the macaques behind you can open a rucksack in four seconds. Both are true on the same terrace.

    Ink and wash panorama of the Rock of Gibraltar from the north-west: the sheer grey north face at the right, the green scrub of the upper ridge falling away to the left, and the town packed along the shore of the bay below.
  2. 2

    Signal Hill / Signal Station

    387 m · can be skipped

  3. 3

    Skywalk / Douglas Lookout

    340 m

    A glass floor with 340 metres under it, looking straight down the channel the whole Mediterranean refilled through.

    Ink drawing of the Skywalk: a glass-floored steel platform cantilevered out from the ridge on lattice bracing, one figure standing at the rail, the bay and the shoreline far below.
  4. 4

    Douglas Path (south end)

    400 m approx. · can be skipped

  5. 5

    St Michael's Cave + Cabin

    300 m approx.

    The largest of more than a hundred caves in the Rock, with fossils sitting in the walls exactly where they died 200 million years ago.

    Wash drawing of the main chamber of St Michael's Cave, its stalactite curtains hanging out of a dark roof onto a floor of fallen limestone blocks, with a single small figure at the left edge for scale.
  6. 6

    Windsor Suspension Bridge

    250 m approx.

    Seventy-one metres of gorge that moves when you walk it, under a September flight path used by 300,000 raptors.

    Ink and wash plate of the Windsor Suspension Bridge: a slender cable-stayed footbridge on two masts crossing a deep limestone gorge, with wild olive and yellow-flowered scrub framing the near end.
  7. 7

    Apes' Den / Queen's Gate

    200 m approx.

    Europe's only wild monkeys, in matriarchal troops, where a male losing an argument picks up somebody else's baby to end it.

    Ink and wash plate of three Barbary macaques on a drystone wall above the Apes' Den path: an adult grooming another's shoulder while a juvenile sits below, with the gravel track and maquis scrub climbing behind them.

How sure we are

Every claim on this walk is marked. The Rock has wonderful stories attached to it and some of them are not true, which is more interesting than pretending otherwise.

  • Established

    Sourced and not seriously disputed. If a specialist reads this, they will recognise it.

  • Still argued

    Real evidence on more than one side. We have given you the version most researchers hold, and flagged that it is not settled.

  • Told, not proven

    A story people tell about this place. Worth hearing, worth repeating, and not evidence of anything.