The Windsor Bridge: 71 Metres of 2016 Engineering Bolted to a Path Cut for Cannon

2 October 2026 Last checked 2026-10-02

Gibraltar's only suspension bridge crosses a 50 metre ravine on a walkway an English regiment refurbished in 1968, on a route cut in the 18th century to move guns uphill.

The path under Gibraltar's only suspension bridge was cut so that soldiers could drag cannon up it. The bridge itself spans 71 metres over a ravine 50 metres deep, the crossing takes most people under a minute, and almost nobody crossing it knows they are standing on 18th century military engineering.

The Windsor Bridge is the newest thing on the Upper Rock by about two centuries, and it was dropped into the middle of a path that was already old when it arrived. Almost everything written about it stops at the sway and the view. Here is the rest.

The path is more than 200 years older than the bridge

The bridge sits on Royal Anglian Way, one of the footpaths that lace the Upper Rock. Wikipedia's survey of the Rock's footpaths records that it begins near the Apes' Den, where there is a feeding station for the Barbary macaques, and runs 600 metres to a point near St Michael's Cave.

The name is not decorative. The path carries the name of the Royal Anglian Regiment, whose 2nd Battalion refurbished it in 1968 and 1969, and which still maintains it with help from the Gibraltar Regiment. An English county regiment adopted a footpath on a limestone ridge in the Mediterranean and has looked after it for nearly sixty years.

Under that lies something older again. The Upper Rock paths were cut from the 18th century onwards with chisels, hammers and rods driven into solid rock, for one reason: to get cannon, soldiers and supplies from sea level up to gun positions. Nobody built them for views. The views are a by product of artillery logistics.

So the modern visitor attraction, the 1960s refurbishment and the Georgian engineering are all the same path. You walk all three in 600 metres.

What the bridge actually connects, and why sources disagree

This is worth getting right, because the published descriptions do not match each other.

The Gibraltar Nature Reserve's own page says the bridge spans 70 metres over a deep ravine and is located between two Second World War artillery batteries. Nearly every other source, including the government at the opening, gives 71 metres.

The footpaths survey is more specific and does not agree about the batteries. It says the 71 metre bridge connects an abandoned battery with Hayne's Cave Battery across a 50 metre ravine. Hayne's Cave Battery is a gun position established in 1797, which is not a Second World War battery by any reading.

Rooke Battery, also on Royal Anglian Way, was built in 1907 and last used during the Second World War, and is the likeliest source of the wartime description. We could not find an official document naming both ends of the bridge. If you want the honest version: one end is at or beside Hayne's Cave Battery, the other is a disused emplacement, and no published source we can find names them both together.

Both batteries are worth knowing about as you cross. Hayne's Cave Battery dates from 1797, in the years after the Great Siege, when the garrison was still thinking hard about where the next attack came from. Rooke Battery is 1907, built for a different century and a different enemy, and it was last used in the Second World War. The bridge links two answers to the same question, given 110 years apart.

The metre of difference is trivial for a walker. We mention it because this site would rather tell you the sources conflict than pick one and sound certain.

A Gibraltar firm, a Spanish contractor, and a bridge put together off site

The construction story is the part that gets left out, and it is the most Gibraltarian thing about the structure.

The account given consistently across Gibraltar's visitor literature is this. The work was done by Bovis Koala, a local firm, working with Muntanya, a Spanish contractor that had built similar spans in the Pyrenees. The main structure was assembled off site in Spain and brought in. The anchors were driven 12 metres into the rock face, and the design had to account for the wind that funnels through the Strait, so the bridge is flexible rather than rigid. We could not find an official government document setting any of that out, so treat it as the published account rather than the record, and the 12 metre figure in particular as reported rather than confirmed.

If that account is right, and we have no reason to doubt it, the Rock's most modern visitor structure was built with cross border expertise in the middle of the decade when the frontier was the hardest political question in the territory. Nobody made a point of it at the time, which is itself telling about how much ordinary working traffic crosses that border compared with how much argument does.

A 2016 tourist attraction, bolted to a path an English regiment has maintained since 1969, following a line cut for 18th century cannon. Three centuries of engineering in 600 metres, and no sign explains any of it.

It opened on 21 June 2016. The Chronicle reported that Chief Minister Fabian Picardo opened it, with Governor Edward Davis, Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Garcia, Tourism Minister Samantha Sacramento, Environment Minister John Cortes and the Tourist Board's Nicky Guerrero present. Picardo framed it as part of a wider programme, saying the government had started the process, which lay abandoned for years, of restoring, revitalising and rebranding the Upper Rock Nature Reserve.

The Skywalk followed two years later, in 2018. The Windsor Bridge was the first of the two, and it set the pattern.

Crossing it, honestly

It sways. Not alarmingly, but enough that people stop in the middle and then decide not to. The deck is open, the sides are mesh, and you can see straight down the ravine the whole way. If heights bother you, this will find out.

The official visitor description is accurate about the experience if thin on the engineering. It is also short. At 71 metres you are across before the nerves fully arrive, which is the opposite of the Mediterranean Steps, where exposure lasts for an hour. People who cannot face the Skywalk's glass floor often manage the bridge without trouble, because a mesh deck over a ravine reads differently from glass over a cliff.

The real limitation is access. The Nature Reserve's own page says the bridge is reached by steps at either end and that access can be difficult for those with limited mobility. There is no step free route onto it. If someone in your group uses a wheelchair, the Skywalk has a lift and this does not, and no amount of planning changes that.

Wind is the other factor. The structure is built for it, but a strong levanter makes the crossing unpleasant rather than unsafe, and on those days the cloud sitting on the ridge removes the view you came for.

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Chaining it with the rest of the Upper Rock

The bridge is not a destination on its own. It is 600 metres of path between two things you were going to see anyway.

Start at the Apes' Den end, which is where Royal Anglian Way begins and where the macaque feeding station is. Walk the path, cross the bridge, carry on to St Michael's Cave. That is a sensible hour, and it takes in the one stretch of the reserve where the military layering is most obvious.

Two things are shut this autumn and both change the plan. The cable car closed on 18 November 2025 for a full rebuild and is not expected to carry passengers until 2027, which our cable car status guide tracks, so you are walking up or taking a taxi. And O'Hara's Battery at the top of the ridge is closed for refurbishment, which we set out in our guide to Gibraltar's highest point. The bridge, the Skywalk, St Michael's Cave and the Great Siege Tunnels are all open.

The macaques on this path are not a photo opportunity

Royal Anglian Way starts at the Apes' Den feeding station, which means the stretch you walk to reach the bridge is one of the places on the Rock where you are most likely to be close to Barbary macaques. They are wild animals that are thoroughly used to people, which is a worse combination than either on its own.

Feeding them is illegal. The Government of Gibraltar's ape management page states the penalty is £500, and gives the reason plainly: food offered as a treat disrupts their diet and can cause diseases including diabetes. The fine is not the main argument against it. A macaque that learns people carry food starts going through bags, and then through windows in town.

The practical rules are short. Carry nothing visible in your hands, especially a plastic bag or anything that rustles. Keep rucksacks closed and on your front in the busy stretch. Do not put your face next to one for a photograph. They are quick and strong for their size, and a bite means a trip to St Bernard's and a day of your holiday spent in a waiting room.

What it costs and when to go

There is no separate ticket for the bridge. It is inside the Gibraltar Nature Reserve, so a reserve ticket covers it: £30 for an adult, £22 for a child aged 5 to 11, and free for children aged 0 to 4. The reserve opens 9.30am to 7pm from May to September and 9am to 6pm from October to April, closes on 25 December and 1 January, and shuts at 3.30pm on 24 and 31 December.

Go early. The deck is narrow and a tour group ahead of you turns a one minute crossing into a long wait behind somebody's photograph. Before about 11am on a weekday you will often have it to yourself.

October through to May is the better stretch of the year for the walk up, for the same reason the Mediterranean Steps are better then. Summer turns the climb from town into forty minutes of full sun with no shade worth the name, and the reserve closes an hour later in summer but you will not want the extra hour.

Victory Suites on Devils Tower Road works for an Upper Rock day because of where it sits rather than what is in it. It is about ten minutes on foot from Grand Casemates Square, which puts you at the bottom of the walking routes without a taxi, and minutes from the airport. Our 100+ serviced apartments have full kitchens, there is an indoor pool and a gym in the building, and the team can tell you whether the ridge is in cloud before you commit to the climb. We work with 300+ booking channels, and asking us directly is usually quicker than any of them.