Oujda, Morocco to Tunis, Tunisia shows a ferry to Spain and back as the way to transit the Morocco/Algeria border.
That’s because that border has been closed for more than 20 years.
A few years back there was a story making the rounds in the “idiot blindly obeys sat nav and winds up somewhere ridiculous” vein about a guy with a truck load of cars who wound up in a nature preserve overlooking the North Sea that happened to have the word “Gibraltar” in its name, when of course he was trying to go to Gibraltar. From Istanbul, IIRC.
Something they never mentioned in the stories that I feel probably contributed to the problem: you can’t drive to Gibraltar.
Spain still contends that Gibraltar is part of Spain, illegally occupied by England for like 300 years, and technically a state of war exists between those two nations along that border. I don’t know how the UK treats border-crossers there, but Spain arrests anyone crossing that border, last I heard, so I imagine you also can’t enter Gibraltar from Spain.
What I love are when the routing algorithms get flummoxed without closed borders being at all to blame.
From personal experience, at least as of 6 years ago, Mapquest had some wonky idea about how to transit Virginia Beach. If one were traveling from, say, New Jersey to the Outer Banks (North Carolina), the obvious route is to take Route 13 south into Virginia Beach, then get on I-64 where 13 crosses it, take that to Route 17 which goes down towards the Outer Banks. But Mapquest had you get off Route 13 a couple miles before 64, then go east on Route 60 about 5 miles, turn south there for s few miles on Route 279, then get on I-264 to come back west to I-64.
For whatever reason, Mapquest thought everyone passing through Virginia Beach should take 279, a road through a residential area that connects the largest shopping district to the shore of Chesapeake Bay and isn’t on the way to anywhere else.
And someone famously wrote in to Top Gear with the results of asking their sat nav to route them a short distance without taking the M5. The result sent you to Ireland and France.
The border was closed by Franco in 1969 but re-opened in 1985. Although there are occasional issues with border crossing, you absolutely can drive to Gibraltar.
As mentioned yes you can drive to Gibraltar. It isn’t “occupied by England”, and a state of war does not technically or otherwise exist. And you wouldn’t normally get arrested just for crossing the border. Other than that, a pretty accurate paragraph.
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Road traffic is permitted, but need special visas and permissions for each city you visit.
You can’gt just drive from Lahore to Delhi.
Underline mine, but that means the reason Google doesn’t give it or allow you to force it is that it can’t be done in a normal vehicle (I’m assuming Google doesn’t expect to be used by the Paris-Dakar). Makes sense to me. Have you also tried to get driving routes from Valencia to Mallorca? I hear there’s plans to build a bridge…
Even when it was closed, it was only closed to some types of traffic. A lot of people from La Línea work in Gibraltar and did so while the border was closed to merchandise.