Algeciras to Ronda by Train - Mr Henderson's Railway: Visit Andalucia for the Curious Traveller, #1

By Nick Nutter

Mr Henderson's Railway as it is known, more formerly the Algeciras to Ronda line, was built at a time when Britain was a colonial power, her industry led the world and, as far as her industrialists, financiers and entrepreneurs were concerned, nothing was impossible.
In an age when it was considered a privilege to be born British and everybody else was somewhere further down the ladder the British accomplished extraordinary feats. One such feat was the Algeciras to Bobadilla railway, not just a project to build a railway line, it was a just one part of a plan to connect the disputed territory of British held Gibraltar to the outside world through, if not enemy then less than friendly territory, Spain. This is the story of that railway line and the villages and towns on the route.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Nutter
• Release date: Aug 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463508084

Nick Nutter

Nick Nutter was born and raised in Lancashire. At the age of seventeen years he joined the Fleet Air Arm as an anti submarine helicopter observer and subsequently became the youngest officer in the Royal Navy to wear 'wings'. That career was followed by twenty two years in the Lancashire Constabulary, fourteen of which were on detached, village beats. He and his partner, Julie Evans, moved to Spain in the year 2000. They started a business, Duquesa Business Centre and a website design company. Duquesa Business Centre was sold in 2005 and is to this day a successful business. In the year 2004 they created a magazine, 'Andalucia Life' that, over the following five years, became the best read magazine onthe Costa del Sol. The magazine was sold in 2011. In 2010 Nick and Julie bought a failing business and developed Estepona Port Business and Internet Centre that was sold in 2015. Now they are concentrating on a community site, www.visit-andalucia.com, their webdesign business, www.wecandu.com and producing travelogues about Andalucia. Their first eBook, 'The Sherry Triangle' was published in November 2015.

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Introduction

Henderson’s Railway near Jimera de Libar

Mr Henderson’s Railway as it is known, more formerly the Algeciras to Ronda line, was built at a time when Britain was a colonial power, her industry led the world and, as far as her industrialists, financiers and entrepreneurs were concerned, nothing was impossible.

In an age when it was considered a privilege to be born British and everybody else was somewhere further down the ladder the British accomplished extraordinary feats. One such feat was the Algeciras to Bobadilla railway, not just a project to build a railway line, it was a just one part of a plan to connect the disputed territory of British held Gibraltar to the outside world through, if not enemy then less than friendly territory, Spain.

This is the story of that railway line and the villages and towns on the route.

Route of the Railway Track

The map shows a stylised view of the railway track from Algeciras to Ronda showing the Arriate loop before Ronda, one of the tightest loops on a railway line

The Start of the Line

18th century Spanish Map. Gibraltar isolated by no mans land and Spanish lines

You may not want to travel 10,600 miles by rail from Algeciras to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam but if you did, you could. According to the Daily Mail in 2009 ‘this is the longest train journey possible today without leaving the rails’.

It is all thanks to three men, a Gibraltarian merchant ship owner called Captain Louis Lombard, Sir Alexander Henderson a British financier and a Scottish engineer, John Morrison. Between them, at the end of the 19th century, they completed the last link in the chain that would allow travel by rail from Algeciras to the capital cities of Europe; Algeciras to Bobadilla via Ronda.

Gibraltar is at the extreme south west of the Iberian peninsula at the junction between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Furthermore the Strait of Gibraltar, between Europe and Africa, is only 20 kilometres wide at this point, the African coast and any shipping in the Strait is easily visible. As such Gibraltar is strategically placed to control exit from the Mediterranean and entry to the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. Yet since Britain took over Gibraltar in 1704 the peninsula had been cut off from the rest of Europe by land. All supplies and people had to arrive and leave by sea apart from those wanting to travel for whatever reason on the unmade mule tracks that made up the road network in south western Spain.

According to military historian General Sir William Godfrey Fothergill Jackson GBE KCB MC in his book ‘The Rock of the Gibraltarians’ in the 1860’s a Colonel Sayer stationed on ‘The Rock’ described the town of Gibraltar as, ‘ composed of small and crowded dwellings, ill ventilated, badly drained and crammed with human beings. Upwards of 15,000 persons are confined within a space covering a square mile’.

Poor sewerage and shortage of water allowed epidemics of yellow fever and cholera to regularly ravage the town. The civilian population of Gibraltar and the military officers were allowed to cross the border, indeed some of the officers had houses in San Roque about 10 kilometres away, but travelling far by road was purgatory not to mention potentially hazardous since the whole of the Campo de Gibraltar was, until the late 19th century, a refuge for bandoleros, romanticised bandits.

Gibraltar in the 1890’s

The 12 league journey from Gibraltar to Ronda, assuming no hold ups, would take at least a day on horseback. As the Gibraltar Directory stated, ‘The Spanish league is a very variable measure of distance and entirely dependent on the state of the road. As a rough measure, a league an hour with ordinary roads, or an hour and a quarter under worse than ordinary conditions will be about the rate of progress. This is a good thing to remember and will save some disappointment, especially if ladies are of the party.’

A Spanish league was supposed to be set at 5,000 Spanish yards or 4.2 kilometres so the Gibraltar Directory had the road distance from Gibraltar to Ronda as 50.4 kilometres. The true distance via Gaucin, the shortest route, is 97 kilometres.

The regular servicemen were confined to the town described by Richard Ford in his Handbook for Travellers in Spain: ‘the differences of nations and costumes are very curious: a motley masquerade is held in this halfway house between Europe, Asia, and Africa, where every man appears in his own dress and speaks his own language. Civilization and barbarism clash here indeed... or the Rock, like Algeria, is a refuge for destitute scamps, and is the asylum for people of all nations who expatriate themselves for their country’s good.’

Ford described the town’s Main Street as ‘the antithesis of a Spanish town’, lined with ‘innumerable pot–houses’ which made it