Old Town Heritage Trail - Launch
The Gibraltar Heritage Trust is pleased to announce a new heritage trail project which has been written and narrated by Trustee Ray Payas. With the recent publication of ‘A Rocky Labyrinth’, written by Manolo Galliano, with photographs and illustrations by Victor Hermida, this new trail is a great way for locals and tourists to re-engage with the Old Town and explore the rocky labyrinth for yourself.
The Old Town Heritage Trail is an interactive walk through the streets and alleys of the Old Town of Gibraltar for both visitors and locals of Gibraltar. To follow the route, you will walk a path via several “way-points” through the old town, guided by an ‘App’ on your smartphone. At each way point the app will automatically detect that you are in the right place and it will play a pre-recorded audio track with information about the street you are standing in. At the same time, you can view photographs of the surrounding area on your phone screen. At the end of most audio segments there will be brief directions on how to find the next way point.
The route
The Walk starts from John Mackintosh Square, outside The Main Guard, headquarters of the Gibraltar Heritage Trust. From here you will be guided eastwards along City Mill Lane, Cornwall’s Lane and onwards to the Upper Town, following a circular route that returns you to Cornwall’s Parade from where you can easily return to John Mackintosh Square, your starting point. The route is shown on the attached map.
Instructions
Before starting you must install on your phone the IZI Travel app. You can find it on the Apple store, Google Play, or Windows phone store.
Once installed, start up the app and select (from the icons along the bottom of the screen) the Free Walking Mode. It’s the third icon from the left and it look like a dice. The screen will display a map centered on your location. Click on “Start Autoplay” and the map will zoom in to show the way points nearest you (make sure your location is turned on). On the app each point is known as a “story”. There are 75 stories available.
If you are inside the trigger zone for one of the points you will see that the phone loads the story for that point, and the audio track will begin. It’s best to be in John Mackintosh Square before starting the app, that way the walk will be started at the beginning as intended.
If you get lost it is easy to use the map on the app to walk to the next way point, from where you can then continue the walk.
Warning
The trail includes a fair amount of walking up and down steps and hills, and the total duration is around one to one and a half hours, so a certain level of fitness is required. For those who want the experience with less strenuous physical exertion there are a couple of points on the walk where an alternative, shorter route is offered. These are at the top of Castle Street and at the junction of Castle Road and Willis’s Road.
Be aware that some parts of the trail are along roads that carry vehicular traffic, and care must be taken to avoid accidents.
