The Tunnels and the North

The northern fork: two tunnel systems, the castle, and back down into town.

On foot: 4 h
Distance: 5.51 km
Effort: Moderate · steps
Stops: 10

Open this on your phone

Point a phone camera at the code. The walk is held in one hand while you climb, and it stores itself on the phone, so it keeps working in the cave and in the tunnels.

tour.sitesbyhugo.com/walks/tunnels-and-the-north

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Before you set off

Two litres each in summer. The only water inside the reserve is at St Michael's Cabin, and it is not on every walk.
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.

The shape of it

105 m up, 480 m down

The walk

The other fork, and the one to take when it is hot. Most of the interest here is inside the Rock: galleries hand-cut through limestone during a four-year siege, and a separate wartime system that a stay-behind party was meant to be sealed into. Underground it is cool all year, which is why this walk still works at two in the afternoon in August. 5.5 km from the Top Station down the north face to Grand Casemates Square, 480 metres of descent and only about 100 of climb, roughly four hours including time inside the tunnels. Good with children. The Moorish Castle is closed for works, so that stop is one you look at rather than walk into.

What you will actually see

10 stops. The five with drawings are worth stopping properly for. The rest are a minute of narration and a reason to look up.

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.
2
Middle Hill Battery
300 m approx. · can be skipped
A gun nobody remembers, under a September sky that is a queue of migrating birds.
3
Rock Gun Battery
385 m approx. · can be skipped
The top of the north face, looking straight down at the quarry that gave up the first Neanderthal skull.
4
Great Siege Tunnels
195 m approx.
Galleries cut by hand through solid limestone so the guns could finally fire downwards at the Spanish lines.
5
Princess Caroline's / Military Heritage Centre
150 m approx.
A battery turned museum, at the place a fleet came to be patched up, watered and buried.
6
WWII Tunnels
120 m approx.
Six men volunteered to be sealed inside this rock for a year with a radio. The chamber was forgotten until cavers found it in 1996.
7
City Under Siege
140 m approx.
The oldest British buildings on the Rock, and the story of the year the whole town was shipped away.
8
Moorish Castle / Tower of Homage
93 m approx.
The keep the word Gibraltar is named after, shot at through fourteen sieges and still standing. Currently closed, though, so you look rather than enter.
9
Willis's Road Bus Stop
90 m approx. · can be skipped
Listen here: Llanito swaps between Spanish and English mid-sentence, with Genoese and Maltese in it.
10
Grand Casemates Square
10 m approx.
A galley house, then a barracks, then a parade ground with a gallows on it. Now: lunch.