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Frontier to Town

From the Spanish border into Casemates, across a working runway on the way.

On foot
45 min
Distance
1.44 km
Effort
Easy · step free
Stops
5
Start walking

Works with no signal

3 MBabout a minute on 4G

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

6 m up, 0 m down

The walk

You walk over an international runway. That is the whole pitch, and it is true: the path from the border into town crosses Gibraltar's only airport at ground level, and it shuts with barriers and red lights when an aircraft is coming. The rest is 1.4 km of flat pavement from the frontier queue to Grand Casemates Square, past the north face of the Rock and through a gate cut into the town wall. Forty-five minutes at a walking pace, no climbing, no ticket, no closing time. If you have crossed on foot from La Linea and you are heading for the Rock, start here. It ends in the square where the walk up from town begins.

What you will actually see

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

  1. Ink and wash plate of the land frontier with Spain: a row of customs booths under a long flat canopy across the road, a queue of people filing through the pedestrian lane at the left, and the sheer grey north face of the Rock rising abruptly out of the flat isthmus straight ahead.
    1

    The Frontier

    4 m approx.

    A border that was shut for sixteen years, and that stopped existing in July 2026.

  2. Ink and wash plate of the place where the road and footway cross Gibraltar's airport runway: a red and white barrier lowered across the road with a handful of people waiting on foot behind it, the empty black runway running right across the middle of the picture, and the sheer grey north face of the Rock rising out of flat ground beyond it.
    2

    The Runway Crossing

    4 m approx.

    The path into town crosses a live international runway. Red lights and barriers, on foot.

  3. 3

    Devil's Tower Road

    6 m approx.

    Under the north face, a few hundred metres from where the first Neanderthal skull was dug up.

  4. 4

    Landport Tunnel

    8 m approx.

    The gate cut through the town wall. Twenty guns, a nightly drawbridge, and a flooded moat.

  5. Ink and wash plate of Grand Casemates Square: a wide paved square with the long two-storey Casemates barracks across the far side, a row of round-arched openings at its base and shuttered windows above, cafe tables under parasols along the near edge, and the green slope of the Rock rising behind the roofline.
    5

    Grand Casemates Square

    10 m approx.

    A galley house, then a barracks, then a parade ground with a gallows on it. Now: lunch.

Where it leaves you

This walk finishes at Grand Casemates Square.

You can carry straight on from there:

All walksHow we mark what is certain, and what is not