Day 6 - Borjomi back to Tbilisi, the day of the big match...

There’s no doubt that this was something of a helter skelter sort of the trip, and I didn’t really allow myself much time to stand and stare, so it was time to head back to Tbilisi, for I had arranged, via an online app, a ticket for Georgia’s home Euro 2020 qualifying match against the mighty Gibraltar.

The train times out of Borjomi being somewhat inconvenient - either too early in the morning or too late to get to the game, I had to improvise. A taxi was arranged to take me back to Khashuri, to connect with the train from Poti to Tbilisi, and a train ticket purchased via the Georgian Railways app.

Georgian driving etiquette is vaguely familiar, given the amount of time I’ve spent in Mumbai over the years. Patience does not figure hugely, and overtaking manoeuvres can be a bit “close your eyes and wait for the crash” from a passenger perspective. But my driver got me to the station easily enough. Change was a different matter, as my 100 Lari note as clearly more than he could handle. Luckily, a nearby bank solved the problem, I paid him a ridiculously reasonable fare - Tbilisi taxi drivers are clearly not reflective of the rest of Georgia - and I could catch my late running train.

Back in Tbilisi, the weather was rather threatening, very warm with the promise of thunderstorms. I borrowed an umbrella for the walk to the Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena, the home of Dinamo Tbilisi and also the national stadium. I wasn’t alone, with what looked like an organised group of fans matching to the stadium singing and lighting flares. The atmosphere didn’t seem particularly tense, and given the likely absence of away supporters, it didn’t seem to be a concern.

Arriving at the stadium, the mobile ticket on my phone was scanned and I was in, in good time for a 3 Lari beer and an encounter with three Gibraltar fans, all from England. They had clearly travelled without any great expectation of a glorious victory but were there for a good time and an explore.

The game itself was fairly uneventful. Gibraltar started off keeping virtually everyone behind the ball, daring the Georgians to come at them, which worked for about half an hour, when the ball was rather prodded in from just inside the area by the Georgian midfielder, Guilia. At that point, the Gibraltar tactics changed, and they pushed forward a bit more. Just before half time, they won a free kick just outside the box, which was curled towards the top corner only to be clawed away by the Georgian goalkeeper.

The second half was a contest between a collection of skilled, but not terribly team orientated individuals, aka Georgia, and a well drilled but not terribly skilful Gibraltar. A goalkeeping error and a slightly dubious penalty saw the Georgians run away with a 3-0 win, which was probably deserved on the run of play. Fair play to the Gibraltarians though, they do try to attack the opposition, rather than keeping ten men behind the ball for ninety minutes.

It never did rain, but the floodlights attracted hordes of insects, a feast for the local swallows who swooped in time and again. It was probably more productive than being a Gibraltar forward was likely to be...

Gibraltar: a brief guide to the Rock

My first impressions of Gibraltar were not, to be honest, very good ones. We had grabbed dinner at a restaurant in Casemates Square which was pretty ordinary, with poor service and, on a walk through the town after sunset, I noted that Main Street seemed to be populated entirely by groups of young men somewhat the worse for drink. It was a mite intimidating, and seemingly under-policed.

However, Monday morning dawned bright and sunny, and we had a tour arranged by the Gibraltar Tourism Board to look forward to. Our guide, and driver, Ajessa collected us and showed us some of the sights, telling us a bit about Gibraltar and answering our questions. Europa Point, at the southern tip, is just fifteen miles from Morocco, and we talked about some of the challenges whilst we looked around.

And then, a flash of movement in the water below, and we noticed that there were dolphins leaping out of the water in pursuit of shoals of anchovies, close to the shoreline, so we stopped to watch them for a while. Given that the waters around Gibraltar are some of the busiest in the world, with huge tankers and container vessels passing through all the time, I hadn't expected such a sight.

No tour of Gibraltar would be complete without the Rock itself, with its siege tunnels and the incredible underground complex that was built to defend Gibraltar during World War II, and we were given a brief talk about the tunnels by one of the local guides, who turned out somewhat unexpectedly to be German.

There was time to meet a macaque, and a quick dash around the rest of the territory, before we were returned to our apartment with a rather better impression of gibraltar than we had started with.

A quick flit across the Schengen border...

It is very pleasant to take a morning stroll when you're in a new place. It helps with orientation, blows away the cobwebs, and allows you to get a feel for the place.

So, whilst Ros is off on a dolphin safari - the waters around Gibraltar are full of them - I've gone for a walk around the market... in La Linea de la Concepción (don't worry, I have my passport!). Here, a Valladares can go relatively unnoticed, which is nice, and on a sunny day as this one is, it is nice to just potter around, drink coffee and such like.

Walking towards the Gibraltar/Spain border from the Spanish side...

The journey here is interesting in itself. Head north up Winston Churchill Avenue, crossing the runway of the airport as you do so - yes, Gibraltar is that small - before you get to the border. You walk through the Spanish customs point, unmolested, and no one asks for your passport. Indeed, there doesn't appear to be anyone whose job it is to do so (so much for Fortress Schengen then...). And there you are, in Spain - it couldn't be easier, really.

La Linea is, unexpectedly, quite a bustling place, with its pedestrian precinct full of pavement cafés and shopping opportunities. And, unlike Gibraltar, where every third shop appears to be selling cheap cigarettes and alcohol - there is a huge duty differential between the two sides of the border - La Linea feels somewhat more 'real'.

In fairness, that shouldn't be taken as being a criticism of Gibraltar, which has begun to grow on me little by little, but it is, like other small enclaves, slightly difficult to get your head around.

But, I guess, I ought to head back to the Rock, with its fish and chips, its Marks and Spencer and the apes...

Adios, amigos!

The secret, I'm told, is in being somewhere else...

I'm a great believer in the concept of somewhere else. As an Englishman with a rather quirky backstory - I was born here, unlike either parent - and a deep and abiding suspicion of nationalism - who is it, exactly, that you're against? - I hold firmly to a view that you only really appreciate your nation's strengths and weaknesses by comparing it with other places.

My country right or wrong? Well, not really, but it's still my country... and yours... and probably theirs too, even if they might be a bit of an embarrassment in civilised circles.

And so, it is necessary to visit other cultures, other places, to get a clearer understanding of where England fits into an increasingly interdependent world. Fortunately, I like to travel, have a natural inquisitiveness and an inability to focus on something for too long. I am also fortunate enough to have means - not vast, or unlimited, but sufficient to allow me to go to new places as opportunities arise.

However, today I am going somewhere slightly unusual, in that it is supposedly an image of a Britain perhaps thought to be lost. Gibraltar, it would be fair to say, is not somewhere that I might have thought of going, but after Ros took part in a debate on Gibraltar in the Lords earlier this year, the government there invited her to visit. As it seemed like a good opportunity to fact find on the ground, as it were, we decided to go - at our own expense.

So, wish me luck on my mission to find out why the apes are, how living in a small enclave is, and if Gibraltar and Spain can ever rub along. I promise to report back...

Ros in the Lords: Gibraltar

Last night in the Lords saw a debate on the current situation in Gibraltar, which raised a number of concerns about the relationship between Gibraltar and Spain. Ros chose to pick up on the failure of the European Union to address the freedom of movement issues involved...

Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD):

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Baroness for tabling this debate and for her speech in which all her experience was brought to bear in a characteristically incisive and robust style. I should make clear at the outset that I am not an expert on Gibraltar, but last year, as the serious damage done by the level of Spanish border checks became clear, one aspect of the situation reminded me of somewhere that I know well at the other end of the Mediterranean, on the island of Cyprus. In both cases, a historic legacy is causing monumental problems for citizens today, and they are not receiving adequate support from the institutions that ought to be protecting them. The people of Gibraltar are UK citizens and have been for 300 years, and while the bilateral relationship between the UK and Spain is paramount, Gibraltarians have another citizenship as members of the European Union, and it is that issue on which I wish to focus my remarks.

It is an irony that while the EU has become increasingly active in the diplomatic field as a result of the creation of the External Action Service, it not been sufficiently active in resolving tensions within the EU itself, as Cyprus and Gibraltar graphically demonstrate. To be slightly tongue in cheek, I wonder whether there ought to be an internal action service. A recent report on enlargement from the House of Lords EU Select Committee noted that, when countries join the Union without prior resolution of bilateral disputes, it results in the import of those disputes into the everyday decision-making of the EU. We see that constantly with regard to Gibraltar and Cyprus, and I fear that Serbia and Kosovo may be coming down the track.

There is an inconsistency at the heart of the Commission’s approach to these situations. One the one hand, it quite rightly does not get involved in sovereignty disputes but, on the other, it does not always uphold EU legislation in a neutral way. Despite the agreement made in Cordoba in 2006, for example, recent EU passenger rights legislation excluded Gibraltar. The result of this would have been that not only Gibraltarians but any EU citizen passing through the airport would not have benefited from the passenger rights. The European Parliament has subsequently accepted an amendment tabled by Liberal Democrat MEP Graham Watson, which remedied this situation. The matter is now coming to the Council and I hope that the Minister can say today that the Government will fight hard to keep the amendment in.

On Wednesday of this week there will be further votes at the European Parliament plenary session on the same set of issues—only this time it is about the safer skies initiative on air traffic control. Amendments tabled by the Spanish centre right party at the transport committee have succeeded in removing Gibraltar from this legislation, which is disgraceful. We now have to hope that the Parliament will overcome that and put Gibraltar back in. I would like an assurance from the Minister that the Government are doing everything they can.

I believe that the Commission needs to take its responsibilities much more seriously. After years of problems with Spanish authorities carrying out border checks, the escalation of the problem last autumn has meant that the Commission cannot continue to turn a blind eye to it. I am surprised that the conclusion of its investigation was that no EU law had been breached. It seems a strange interpretation of free movement; perhaps future visits should be unannounced and incognito so that the real picture emerges. It was disgraceful that neither the Commission nor the Spanish Government were prepared to publish the conclusions that had been reached. It took an official access-to-documents request by Sir Graham Watson to ascertain that the Commission had described the intensity of the border checks as “unjustifiable”. Therefore, I ask the Minister to outline what steps the British Government are taking with the Commission to ensure that the rights of the citizens of Gibraltar will be upheld.

What we really need is a lasting settlement to stop these incursions, and there is one other potential course of action regarding the border which the Minister might consider. Is it possible to create a legal position whereby Gibraltar, alone from the rest of the UK, could join the Schengen agreement? If this could be done for Gibraltar, then the border crossings could be removed. It has been done—in reverse, so to speak—in that there are islands which are part of France but which have been excluded from Schengen. As both Britain and Spain are members of NATO, I, too, would be interested in hearing whether the incursions of the navy into Gibraltarian waters have been discussed.

European Commission President Barroso recently said:

Free movement of people is a fundamental principle of Europe, a fundamental principle of the treaties, indeed one of the core elements that distinguish our Union ... the principle of free movement exists and … is applicable throughout the Union, without discrimination, because we don’t want citizens of first class and citizens of second class in Europe.

He is quite right to say that, but he now has to act on that with regard to Gibraltar.