Political Correctness
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Mon 26 Oct 2009 09:46
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Finally we are off from Gibraltar and today we
are at position 34:07.16n 008:15.99W and have made just a little westing. The
business matters and reports and telephone meetings are up to date and all is
well. The boatbuilders have recieved cryptic information on producing magazine
racks in cherry and racks in teak and all is organised for the Canary
islands to do a few aftersales jobs. All our family and guests have
departed and Angus Johnson has arrived from Shetland. We decided to spend
the day finishing the stowing a bitmore provisioning and of the course the
inevitable caving and potholing. Yes on Saturday afternoon not long after Angus
arrived and Trish bought 12 litres of Gin for £40 we spent the savings on a trip
into the lower caves below the incredible and very impressive St Michaels cave.
While all of us know that Gibraltar is famous for its Barbary Apes who we found
were a bunch of cheeky monkeys, some of you may not know that the Rock is full
of tunnels and caves. There are the great siege tunnels of 1779 to 1783 built
with picks and shovels and the odd chunk of dynamite when men were men and
before the HSE got in the way of progress. These tunels run to thousands of
metres and allow cannons to poke through the side of the rock converting the
whole rock into an impregnible fortress.While visiting these tunnels and the
moorinsh fortress from 1333 in seems to me that the attackers in all these
various seiges of forts missed a trick. It always seems to me from reading all
types of history over the years that invaders or attackers of one type or
another could easily take the land all around strongholds where the army top
brass or royalty or whoever would hole up. There then always seems to be
fearsome battles to try and take the last 4 or 500 square metres surrounded by
thick walls or rock in the case of Gibraltar in a desparate attempt to try and
get at the "problematic" guys inside and sort them out. Now I think I am missing
something and probably some Royal, high ranking general or psycopathic
despot will tell me BUT why dont the invading force just throw a cordon round
the place and keep them in and - WAIT and get on with living? Now take
Afganistan .............
Anyway enough politics and history for the day.
Tunnels: In addition to the great seige tunnels there are 56 km of tunnels in
the rock built during the second world war where apparently many thousands of
peole could survive for years without having to endure the excellent climate
outside and where I believe Churchill and Montgomery visited and it is said the
North African campaign was planned from there. All this is incredible and
facinating but absolutely nothing compared to what mother nature has served up
for us with St Michaels cave. This is simply one of the most dramatic naturall
phenomenon I have ever seen and it seems to be marketed much lower key than the
bloomin monkeys - maybe its me? Anyway forget all that we were going caving
below this cave apparently to something more dramatic. It involved abseiling,
climbing waking along ledges and generally crawling and slithering along on your
backside. For this trip you need a special guide and we contacted super
Mario from the Spanish army I think. After donning the hard hats and getting
over the initial apprehension we slithered scrambled climbed and huffed our way
to the very bowels of Gibraltar rock to come to the edge of a small emareld
lake in the most dramatic chamber you can imagine. Well worth the change of
underpants. Tattie Buy.
No! - one more thing: an Englishman recently
told me he was driving into Scotland from England and at the border he saw a
sign which said "You are now entering Scotland - no salad for 200 miles!" Now I
am a very proud Scot and of course there are somethings we need to get sorted
out our health for one - but I found that hilarious. Now when you enter the
Gibraltar straits on the Aftrican side there is a very large "sign" (writing in
the mountainside) I dont know what it said but my crew got out of
control with ideas about what it said - and guess what? - I cant tell you
any of them, because although hilarious it would be badly mis interpreted and we
would be accused of things we are not - so have a go yourself but dont tell
anybody or laugh out loud.
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