The Pillars of Hercules

We've just returned from a cruise in the western Mediterranean passing twice between the two great blocks of rock - Jabal Ṭāriq (Mount Tarik), our Gibraltar, and Jebel Moussa on the Moroccan side - known as the pillars of Hercules. This meeting place of two great continents and two seas is one I have visited often enough before, usually by sea when passing to and from East Africa but also....

....by land, when crossing from Spain to Morocco and back in 1962 on my abortive attempt to return to Rhodesia.

Gibraltar is always spectacular, particularly when one is passing it in the early morning on a glass-still day. We stopped for six hours on the way back when the midday heat rose into the upper twenties, and amused ourselves by sitting at a pavement cafe to watch crowds of tourists go by and comment on the Spanish-ness of everything - except the red pillar boxes and policemen in British-bobby helmets.

Shortly after leaving Gibraltar for Southampton I had what was a memorable moment, what is likely to be, for me, a last glimpse of the mainland of Africa, the continent which I consider to have so influenced my life.