Beneath The Lunchtime Of the Apes (breaktime in Gibraltar)

Lunchtime during the Gibraltar contract in 2010


Thursday 11ish. I need to know if I can get a ticket on the ferry (Tangiers) tomorrow. Spanish website doesn’t work.

I start marching down Main street in Gibraltar to get to Tourist information in Casements Square at the other end. Just before Casemates Square a large group of Eastern European tourists is gathered at the end of Main Street. I stop and look up and the huge tobacconists, which is covered in scaffolding, has got two Barbary apes up there messing about and squeaking at the humans. This is probably the busiest place in Gibraltar.

I’ve been here a couple of months now and ape cheekiness around here is no longer a surprise. I move on.

Tourist Information Centre directs me back towards Ferry Agents in Irish Town. Walking back past the ape incident into Irish Town I pass a motorbike cop (looks exactly like a British bike cop but the bikes are nice 80s vintage CBX750 Honda's in traffic colours) headed towards ape terrorism with genuinely worried look on his face.

Ferry Agents tells me we won’t know if there will be a ferry on Friday until.. Friday. There is some dispute with the Spanish.

I get lunch in Moroccan themed lunch bar. Walking back down Main Street I approach The Convent, the old Governors residence, which has two armed soldiers on guard outside at all times.

Further down the street two fire engines with lights and sirens blazing are headed obviously back in the direction of the ape terrorism. They are being held up by some total fool in a 4x4 (loads of 4x4s in tiny Gibraltar) who is trying to maneuver his vehicle out of the way of the fire engines in medieval streets to allow the fire engines to pass. Driver of 4x4 isn’t taking enough notice of the one traffic cop at the scene. Then the two soldiers (both look under 20) march over to 4x4 with their assault rifles, with polished bayonets fitted, and forceably instruct 4x4 driver to get out of the way of the fire engines. 4x4 driver drives off the road onto pavement immediately and nearly hits a newsagents. Loan traffic cop thanks soldiers who return to their post outside convent.

Fire engines take off headed for other end of Main Street to either rescue and/or restrain apes. Bemused Eastern European tourists take a lot of photos.

I go back to work

Road trip : Devon to Gibraltar to Arctic Circle

i am acutely aware this started as a travel blog not tv nerd-land - so as a reminder of the days when i was interesting here is something summarised (for the first time) and sent off this week

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Hodgson <chodgson625@gmail.com>
Date: 1 October 2013 14:25
Subject: Road trip : Devon to Gibraltar to Arctic Circle

Dear EVO.

Thought you'd be interested. If not can you suggest someone who might be?

Road Trip
Devon to Gibraltar via Le Mans, Andorra
then
Gibraltar to Arctic Circle (Narvik) via Barcelona, Millau, Alps, Grossglockner High Road, Austria, Bavaria, Berlin, Sweden, Ice Hotel, Finland.. and back to Harwich via Copenhagen
in
2001 Audi TT coupe (225 bhp version)

I'm still compiling and finding material from two road trips in my 2001 Audi TT Mark 1, to and from Devon to Gibraltar, on the return leg coming back via Finland and the Arctic Circle. I'd got a contract for Victor Chandler in Gib and the possible road trip over there had been at the back of my mind all along.

Trip down to Gib was a burn through France and Spain (stopping at Murcia motel to get the the incredible N-342) with a hairy but amusing drive across the top of Andorra in snowy February (thank god for Haldex 4WD drive). Arrived in Gib to amazement from workmates, who had all said the road trip from UK to Gib was routine but when pushed actually couldn't remember knowing anyone who had done it..
Googlemap Exmoor to Gibraltar

For a month or so the TT sat basking in African skies as the only UK registered vehicle I could see on the Rock. Then as my contract with Victor Chandler came to an end I packed all my belongings from my flat into it's copious interior and headed back, with a vague idea to head back to UK via Switzerland. (Luckily I had become accustomed to running around the car to pay at every toolbooth on the journey on the way down). After Easter in Barca, staying in a frightening modern, deserted Gerry Anderson esque hotel (5 * Hesperia Tower hotel Barcelona, thanks to a desperate deal from lastminute.com) I entered France and stopped off at the Milau viaduct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct

Throughout I kept a steady routine of driving all day, sticking to scenic routes where possible, then stopping at the first hotel I saw after 4pm. Navigation was all me, while driving, by map (Iphone was being used for video, photos and audio) so there were plenty of unplanned detours.

Googlemap Gibraltar to Narvik

Losing myself in France and classic era Rolling Stones for a few days  I arrived dazed in Switzerland the day of the Royal wedding so confused I mistook Swiss francs for drink tokens. Following day took St Bernard Pass instead of San Bernadino Pass and spent two days in Italy by mistake. Navigating and driving in the Alps turned out to be a problem. Scenery and changes of gradient are more than distracting. Had a near religious experience listening to Goldfrapp's Felt Mountain while driving almost vertically through incredible Klausenstrasse Pass.  Increasingly pushed for time I had nightmare final eight hour stint through Alps, climaxing in getting lost in Munich one way system to collapse in my cheapo scifi city centre hotel, to collapse turn on CNN find Bin Laden had been killed 

I allowed myself a days rest watching the Bin Laden news including dinner in the fantastically conservative Bavarian hotel (muzak strangely inculded a version of Rocky Horror Show's The Time Warp).  Next day drove through Berchtesgaden to the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grossglockner_High_Alpine_Road

ending at the top of GrossGlocker itself, in a vast empty sky resort overlooking a glacier that could have been mistaken for a Bond villian's HQ.

Finding rest again in a tiny forgotten village in the Austrian alps I then headed up through Ingolstat and Bayreauth to rest for a week with friend in Berlin. The Berliners convinced me to push onto my original target, Narvik, even though it was in the Arctic Circle. After finding the ferry from Sassnitz to Trelleborg and working out how to read the local road signs (my 3 or 4th set of different road signs in as many weeks) I then began a blissfull week long drive up Sweden's Baltic east coast.  Half way up Sweden, with a week to go realised I was at same latitude as Iceland..

Plans to stay at the Ice hotel at Jukkasjärvi,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jukkasjärvi

 were thwarted by finding it half melted on arrival, but later, by the time I was running on fumes past frozen fjords on the way to Narvik I was very glad of the onset of spring. (That and the fact that most of of my Gib clothes were t-shirts and shorts)  After Kiruna I chilled in a hostel in Lulea for a few days and had a day trip to Finland, where I found Santa Claus's Post Office in a blinding bright and blue Arctic spring is more Lovecraftian than Xmassy. By now I had completely fallen in love with Lapland.

Arrival in Narvik was inevitably an anti-climax, though the fact that it was Norwegian national day made it special. I was looking pretty sketchy by this time so a beautiful Norwegian gave me a hair cut. The military museum covering the two naval battles is well worth a visit. For those who don't know the German destroyers which would otherwise have been crucial in Operation Sealion, the invasion of the UK, where destroyed in two large naval battles in Narvik Fjord in 1940. The 2nd battle featured a veteran Royal Navy dreadnought from WW1 that had no business being in a fjord.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Narvik#Second_Naval_Battle_of_Narvik
With money running out fast I headed down through Sweden to Denmark across the vast Oreseund Bridge bridges to eventually get the ferry home. After an incredibly rough crossing with Danes having Heineken for breakfast I found myself ashore at Harwich. Essex roads seemed Hell in comparison to the previous couple of weeks. A good friend in sleepy Bury St Edmund leant me her sofa and I slept .. until her cat woke me up. I didn't mind, he's a great cat.

Iphone allowed me to take endless photos and make constant audio notes which still pop up randomly now when music selection is on shuffle.

Despite being a habitual  writer (see blog)
http://corben-dallas.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/TT
I've hesitated writing any of it down before now because I don't know how or where to start - I have enough audio/visual detail for several documentaries!

GrossGlockner High Road and Road Trip FAQ

Test post to blog direct from Picassa road trip content
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=200809277275172302020.0004a55bb58ce21538959&msa=0

Road Trip FAQ

why? Why do this drive when the petrol price is so high?
I did it because the price is high and getting higher all the time. For posterity and just because.

Don't I feel any responibilty to the environment in burning all the petrol. The TT is terrible on emissions, but it is an old car. I will not support construction and sale of new cars until there is a realistic alternative.

The impending loss of oil will remove any debate from the private car use issue with regard to climate change. From then on the issue will be on eating meat.. as we know that that the vast majority of climate gasses are produced by herd animals bred for human consumption. Do I feel guilty about my energy usage? For six months I lived in Gibraltar breathing in deisel from the shipping berthed in Algeciras Bay. Commercial shipping has no quarms about emissions, it is standard policy on any ship, liners as well as petrol tankers, to leave the diesel engines running for the entire time it stays in port.

Did you do it because of TOP GEAR?
There was a bit of that but I didn't feel good about it. The recent 'sleepy mexicans' rant I think really was the final final straw for me. Chicharito (Manchester United's razor sharp Mexican striker) looks like he is a stranger to the concept of sleep and even standing still for more than a few seconds, making Top Gears latest desperate attempts to look edgy even more pathetic.

Did you do it because of LONG WAY ROUND?
Oh yes, and felt bad rewatching it afterwards that I had sold out and done this by stupid sports car (I would have been very very dismissive of TT only a few years ago). In my defense I had no support team, next to no planning.. well lets be honest no planning.. and had the entire contents of the flat in Gib squeezed into the car. That level of cargo, over those distances by bike was never going to happen

Uploading this material I just happen to be watching BEING THERE, the Peter Sellers film, and it occurs to me the scene where he emerges from a lifetime of being in one house to explore the neighbourhood for the first time is much like how I felt when I drove the car out of Eurotunnel in Calais...

I mean I've been abroad before but always been based somewhere, never FREE...

Peter Sellers as Chauncey emerges into the world for the first time in BEING THERE


What was your camera?
All photos video and audio taken with Iphone 3GS

What was the car?
Car is a 2001 Audi TT, picked up in 2007 with 85k on the clock. It's now done 135k. Your basic TT Mark 1 is little more than a Golf GTi with a retro body shell, described memorably as a "GTi in hot pants", and is more 1930s NSU racer than practical 21st century transport. These aerodynamics have not been cutting edge since the Daily Mail was Herr Hitler's biggest supporter. Rear "seats" are a particular source of amusement to all and are only temporarily comfortable for small children and Time Bandits. Engine would be the standard 1980s GTi 1.8 but this is the 230 bhp version with boosted compression, bigger turbo and extra intercooler.

It is often quite a dull ride (certainly compared to a bike) but the Audi 4x4 system and heated leather seats have come in very handy.

Named Nicola after the great dinner date I went on in Richmond the night after going to view the car (hi Nic !)

For those who are interested, the content currently on Googlemap and Picassa is perhaps a third of the total material. Similar maps based on the road trips Parracombe > Gibraltar Feb 2011 and the return trip Narvik > Parracombe will follow

<PS I had to get to the end of BEING THERE to realise it is primarily about a man who can only relate to the world thru clips from tv, so there is something particularly ironic or tragic about relating to clips from it>