Twenty minutes gets you across the town centre, and that’s the easy half of the answer. The Upper Rock is a whole day, and even then we didn’t see all of it. I counted somewhere around 30,000 steps in one August day up there and we still left a section out.
Gibraltar is 6.7 square kilometres, which sounds like a lazy afternoon. The map honestly isn’t what does you in. It’s the up and down.
Walking the Town
This part is lovely, and it’s genuinely easy.
Casemates Square down to the Alameda Botanic Gardens took me about thirty minutes at a proper dawdle, and that’s with Main Street and all the lovely little lanes hanging off it. I kept stopping to photograph the street signs, because where else are you going to get Bomb House Lane and Secretary’s Lane in the same ten minutes?
The surfaces are good.
No big cobbles, nothing loose underfoot, so I did two full days in flats and only regretted it once, and that wasn’t down here. Casemates over to the airport runway is about ten minutes if you want a marker.
One afternoon we stood on Main Street hunting for a bus or a taxi, waited a fair while, got neither, and just walked the thirty minutes home. It really wasn’t a hardship.
Don’t count on transport turning up, and don’t let it bother you when it doesn’t.
Walking the Upper Rock
Here’s where the day goes, and distance has almost nothing to do with it.
The attractions zigzag across the whole mountain. There isn’t one sensible path that strings them together.
We came through the entrance, started climbing, and then had to walk straight back down again to get to the Windsor Suspension Bridge.
From there it crisscrosses upwards towards St Michael’s Cave. You do that over and over, which is why you’re not walking around Gibraltar so much as up and down it.
Then there’s the heat, and that’s the bit that really gets you. We went in peak August, sweated through everything we were wearing, and by mid afternoon plain water had stopped doing the job.
I really wish we’d packed electrolytes instead of yet another bottle of water.
I should say I loved it anyway.
The harbour views open up the whole way, there are old batteries and cannons at nearly every turn, and that bridge is one of the best things I’ve ever stood on.
Take the road up and the staircase down. The steep staircase runs beside the old cable car line and it doesn’t ease off once.
Going up it is punishing and I regret even looking at it. Coming down is where the damage lands, though.
I could feel it on the hotel stairs that night and properly the next morning, which is worth knowing if you’ve got a second day planned.
Near the bottom the Devil’s Gap path goes rocky for its last 200 metres or so. In flats, that’s the only stretch of the entire day that’ll actually hurt.
Then you hit a set of steps painted with the flag and the word APES across the risers, and you’re back in town.
Can You Walk Around the Whole of Gibraltar?
Town and Upper Rock, yes, in one long day.
The whole territory, so Europa Point and the bays on the west side too, is technically walkable and I wouldn’t bother. The bits in between are just dull walking.
On day two we took the car for that stretch, and I’m glad we did. Europa Point sits past two road tunnels, and the swimming bays are a long way from town with no shade at all in August.
Both had plenty of parking even in peak summer, which surprised me a bit.
If you’ve no car, bus route 3 gets you to Europa Point for £1.80. Getting around Gibraltar has the rest of the routes and what each one cost us, and the best things to do in Gibraltar covers what’s actually worth walking to.
And if what you’re really asking is whether one day covers all of this, my honest answer is over on facts about Gibraltar.
