And Away We Go

It’s 6am and I’m at the airport—but I’m not flying to Gibraltar. Not by design, but because easyJet cancelled my flights and discontinued the route for good measure, throwing my first trip of 2023 into disarray and leaving me scrambling to make alternative arrangements. I briefly considered redirecting to Aachen, Neuchâtel or Annecy, but ultimately doubled down and decided to find another way to the Strait instead.

This is how I find myself boarding a Ryanair flight to Faro—almost 300 miles short of my final destination. There are obviously closer airports, but at such short notice they were either unavailable (easyJet has helpfully stopped flying Edinburgh-Malaga as well) or unaffordable (£133.77 one way for Seville). So it is that I’ll be bookending my trip in Portugal, basing myself in Spain and, eventually, busing it to Gibraltar.

This, I realise, begs an obvious question: why go to all this trouble to visit a British Overseas Territory? I’ll admit, it’s a question I’ve been finding it increasingly different to answer. I first set my sight on Gibraltar in the early days of the pandemic, after I’d been forced to cancel trips to Romania and Switzerland and as countries were imposing a patchwork of custom travel restrictions. By contrast, Gibraltar seemed like a safer bet—and it only became more appealing in the months that followed as Covid, Brexit and Russia conspired to disrupt supply chains, push up prices and fuel inflation. Besides, it has monkeys.

But this is 2023 and safe bets are basically a thing of the past. Rebooking at short notice and with slightly different dates meant I was forced to filter hotels out of my search and resort once more to hosteling; a preference pre-pandemic but a compromise in the years since. Flights, too, were more expensive than I was used to, with ever-shrinking baggage allowances devaluing them yet further. Apple tried to help, bless them—an earpod broke prior to departure and my iPhone was already at half battery by the time I got to the airport—but sacrifices still had to be made to accommodate a telephoto lens. Those macaques weren’t going to photograph themselves.

But I’m here now, between the Rock and the hard place, and there’s no room in my rucksack for regrets. I’m ready to make the most of it: I’ve never been to Portugal before, I’ve heard only great things about Seville and the shift in focus opens up several other opportunities to explore Andalusia as well. There will still be monkeys, but now much more besides, too