Log 043 – The Great Gibraltar Sprint
- Heath Tredell
- Jan 10
- 6 min read
A Sweaty Race Against Chaos - My Laptop was in Gibraltar, My Flight was in Málaga and My sanity was nowhere to be found...
Gibraltar does something to a man. Perhaps it’s the constant, watchful gaze of the Barbary Macaques, Europe’s only wild primates, who seem to possess ancient, simian knowledge of every foolish thing a human will attempt. Or maybe it’s the thin strip of land itself; a stubborn British outpost where the surreal is routine. Now Paul was safely on his way back to Blighty I had a simple list. A sailor’s shopping list of mechanical grievances.
The Fischer Panda generator, that cantankerous little beast from our earlier escapades, needed a service.
The two fridges, which had been performing with the erratic enthusiasm of a caffeinated squirrel ever since Italy, required a professional touch. And the Vevor wind turbine, our proud, whirring sentinel, had decided to become a very expensive, very stationary sculpture. It was producing all the power of a sleepy sloth.
The generator was sorted with "British" efficiency. The fridges, however, fell into the hands of what I can only assume were performance artists specialising in the abstract concept of refrigeration. They returned my units with the cooling panel installed upside down.
The sticker proclaiming ‘THIS SIDE UP’ was pointing resolutely to the floor, a silent scream of incompetence. I stared at the sticker and in that moment, I understood the profound, existential absurdity of Gibraltar. The result? A fridge that didn’t know when to stop, heroically transforming my fresh groceries into a single, monolithic block of ice. I refused to pay. One does not reward a chef for burning the soup. Despite their "expertise" electrician's in Gibraltar were no better at getting my Vevor wind generator to produce wind than the men from Ascar's.. so we admitted defeat.
I met some fascinating people in those Gibraltar docks, their stories peppered with winks and nods about how things ‘really’ work on the Rock. It turns out that the GDP from Gibraltar comes from very interesting sources..... But for fear of upsetting some very influential people these are tales for another time, perhaps, over a bottle of something strong.
My Starlink, our digital lifeline, flickered in and out of consciousness. The local explanation? The British Army, forever playing with their signals, was giving our space-internet a case of the jitters. However, jobs sort of complete it was my time to leave..
Then came The Great Flight Fiasco.
The day I was to fly home, I planned a leisurely 3km stroll to the airport. Paul had only taken a flight home from Gibraltar a week earlier and so I was ready and prepared. I was to fly back to the UK as well, stay for a week whilst I repacked and Pookie and I caught a flight to Thailand to see her family. A kind of fond farewell before we embarked upon the great crossing.
However, a casual glance at my ticket that morning sent a jolt of pure, unadulterated horror through my nervous system. My flight was not from Gibraltar. It was from Málaga. One hundred and thirty kilometres away.
I find that panic is a remarkable motivator. I became a portly, grey-haired comet. I grabbed my rucksack, locked up and ran out into the main street. Remembering that Gibraltar has probably 3 taxi's to its name I realised that I was not going to be that lucky and so considered for a moment the option of waiting for the bus. However, Buses in Gibraltar do not accept card payments and without any GBP in my pocket I decided the only thing I could could was make like Forest Gump and RUN!!!
I sprinted down the many streets and across the border, finding the Spanish offices still slumbering. My mind was awash with urgency of internal commands that just went round and round...
Border.
Fence
Vault.
Traffic
Scurry…
Don’t Stop. Don’t Think. Just Move!
With the grace of a man pursued by hounds, I vaulted a fence and merged with the morning traffic, scurrying through customs.
The officials, to their eternal credit, took one look at the sweating, wild-eyed madman entering their country and wisely decided not to intervene. I flung myself into a taxi. “Málaga Airport,” I gasped. “The fate of my sanity rests in your accelerator foot.” He thankfully obliged.
The taxi journey was a panting sweating nervous ride but miraculously, I made it. I collapsed into my seat, heart hammering a victory tattoo against my ribs. It was only as I was stowing my bag that a new, cold dread washed over me.
A void.
A missing weight.
My laptop was gone.
The entire flight was spent in a numb calculation of a digital life unlived. Could I manage? The answer, upon landing, was a resounding no. Our condo in Thailand has no PC. My life, my logs, my work and my connection to you all, was on that machine.
Thus began the Sequel. A few days later, I was back on a plane to Málaga.
Once in Malaga I hired a car and drove the 130kms back to Gobraltar. But the car hire company forbade me from taking it INTO Gibraltar. So, I parked, and I walked back down the same route I had ran up only a couple of days earlier.. I marched back across that infamous runway, where the great leveller of international travel is a red light and a descending barrier, back to Sawasdeekat. There, on the chart table, my laptop sat, blinking innocently, as if asking, “What took you so long?”
That evening was spent telling the local's I'd met how I had completely lost my brain the few days before but now I was certain I would get things right. The following morning, I checked my ticket. Then I checked it again. Laptop? Zipped securely into my bag. I set off with time to spare, the morning sun blessing my second attempt. All was well until I reached the runway. For as luck would have it, the gate slid shut a mere ten feet in front of me. “I’ll just run across,” I suggested, with the optimism of a man who has not yet met his destiny. I was firmly told to wait.
And then the sky opened.
It wasn't rain; it was a biblical deluge. In moments a solid wall of water had turned the runway into a river and me into a drowned rat huddled under a skeletal tree, a sodden spectre of misfortune.
A group of Chinese tourists arrived, their cameras swaddled in plastic bags, and observed my plight with the detached curiosity of documentarians. A plane landed. The gate remained closed. Twenty minutes passed as another plane had to abort their landing. My buffer of time was evaporating faster than the puddles around my feet.
Desperate, I spotted a British Army soldier who told me that it was possible to walk round. “We’re going around,” I declared, and together we did a quick-time march around the airport perimeter, a route meant for vehicles, not for drowning civilians. I reached my hire car a sopping, shivering wreck. I had no dry clothes. At the Málaga airport, I tried to use the hand dryers to dry my shirt, a futile, tragicomic dance under the weak, tepid air of a sink mounted Dyson blade. I flew home damp and defeated.
After a mere two days in the UK, a blur of laundry and repacking, we were on another plane; this time bound for Bangkok. The goal was simple and glorious: see Pookie’s family, eat until we burst, and store up the warmth before our Atlantic crossing.
Pookie, my Buddhist rabbit, had barely landed before she was back in her element, doing a promotional event for Monsoon Valley Wines at the glittering Mandarin Hotel. Halloween arrived, Bangkok-style, and is a vibrant, colourful spectacle, a delightful clash of Thai spirit and Western spookiness. We spent precious time with her parents, her brother Tor, and a whirlwind of friends. It was, as it always is, a special time and a wonderful reunion.
Thailand, I will state unequivocally, is the greatest food nation on earth. Every street corner is a new revelation, a symphony of chilli, lime, and lemongrass. We ate like monarchs. Pookie even staged a triumphant Thai market kitchen takeover, and we filmed her crafting the perfect, pungent, glorious Som Tam, a symphony of shredded green papaya that sings on the tongue. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/LWUiei_2qTw
We bumped into celebrity chefs in markets, soaked in the humid, electric air, and then, all too soon, we were flying home. Not to the UK, but directly to Gibraltar. To Sawasdeekat. And waiting for us were Danny and Vicky, two brave souls who had decided to cast their lot with ours for the first leg of the great voyage: from the Pillars of Hercules to the spice-scented air of Morocco, and onwards to the Canary Islands.
Join us next time, as we point Sawasdeekat’s bow towards Africa, with crew, chaos, and the vast, unpredictable Atlantic on the horizon… where the real voyage begins.
Comments