A boulder came down on the Mediterranean Steps in late May 2026 and the path was shut with immediate effect. The [Gibraltar Chronicle reported the closure on 31 May](https://www.chronicle.gi/med-steps-closed-over-rock-fall-safety-concerns/), describing a large rock that had landed on the steep steps on the final stretch to the top, the part where the route stops being a walk and becomes a staircase bolted to a cliff. It reopened at noon on 26 June 2026. The [government notice](https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/press-releases/reopening-of-mediterranean-steps-at-the-gibraltar-nature-reserve-4932026-12133) says the pathway was fully cleared of debris and temporary protective fencing was installed at the affected location, and that permanent repairs to the retaining wall will commence as soon as practicable. Read that again. The fencing you walk past is temporary. The wall behind it is still on the list. Almost nothing written about this climb mentions either fact. So here is the climb as it stands in September 2026: what it is, what it costs, how long it honestly takes, and the one thing at the top that we could not confirm is open. This is a military communications route that happens to be beautiful. The British cut the steps to reach their defence posts at the southern end of the Rock: the Levant, Martin's, O'Hara's and Lord Airey's batteries, with the twin 9.2 inch guns of the last two sitting on the summit ridge. Gun emplacements and Second World War observation posts line the route, most of them derelict, none of them signposted as attractions. The path was [restored in 2007](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Steps) by the Bonita Trust, the Government of Gibraltar and the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society. Before that it was a worn military track. The stonework underfoot is the reason you can climb it in trainers rather than boots, though we would still argue for boots. The [Gibraltar Nature Reserve's own page](https://naturereserve.gi/our-rock/mediterranean-steps/) gives the figures that matter: the walk starts at Jews' Gate at 180 metres above sea level and finishes at O'Hara's Battery at 419 metres. The summit of the Rock itself is 426 metres. Height gained on the climb is therefore 239 metres, which is the honest number. Published distances vary between roughly 1.5 km and 2 km, and the gap is not sloppiness. Some measurements start at the Jews' Gate car park and include the level contour of Martin's Path. Others start where Martin's Path turns onto the east face and the cut steps begin. If a site quotes you one figure to the metre, it has not checked the other one. Martin's Path comes first and it flatters you. The path contours along the south western slope above the derelict Levant Battery, barely climbing, with Europa Point and the Strait opening out below. Then it swings round the southern tip of the Rock onto the east face, and the character changes completely. Cliff above, cliff below, and a line of cut stone running across it. Martin's Path barely climbs. Nearly the whole 239 metres is waiting in the steps above it. Early on, a padlocked gate marks the branch down to Martin's Cave, and you cannot take it. The way has been prohibited since past vandalism. Stop at the gate anyway, for what is no longer beyond it: surveys in the 1960s counted roughly 5,000 Schreibers' bats and 1,000 greater mouse eared bats in that cave, and a survey in 2002 found none at all, with fireworks let off inside cited as a factor in the loss. Our guide to [Gibraltar's bat colonies](/blog/gibraltar-bats-caves-tunnels-colonies) follows what happened to them. The cave is itself an old sea cave, now more than 700 feet above the shore, and it carries the name of a soldier. An account published in 1829 says he was wandering the heights in 1821, drunk, went missing from muster, was assumed to have gone over the edge, and turned up three days later in torn clothes. He had fallen. He had landed on the narrow ledge at the cave mouth. Above that same track, at 190 metres and some 30 metres up the slope, sit the Goat's Hair Twin Caves. Both are old sea caves formed along vertical fractures, with the marine erosion still visible in them. The name is literal. A goatherd sheltered there in the 19th century and left enough hair stuck to the walls to christen the place, displacing its original name of Sewell's Fig Tree Caves. One of the twins was emptied of its deposits by a team under George Palao from November 1969, reaching bedrock in June 1970. The published account describes a prehistoric ceremonial burial: a female skeleton with a crushed skull, laid out with pottery vessels, bone pendants, flint blades, armlets and anklets. There is no record of any of it reaching the Gibraltar Museum. The description survives and the objects are untraced, and we could not establish where they went. Both caves are now listed under Gibraltar's Heritage and Antiquities Act 2018 as Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites. Above the