Around and around

Nowadays instead of working for a crust I live off pensions. One of the few things I miss about that last part of my working career, the bit where I attempted to teach English to Spanish students, is that they told me about things Spanish. One time a student told me that she was an architect. When I asked what she was working on and the answer was a roundabout. It was a bit of an eye opener. It had never crossed my mind that roundabouts were architect designed.

Roundabouts in Spain are a bit of a growth industry. New ones pop up all the time. Spanish roundabouts have, to British schooled drivers, strange rules. Basically the outside lane, the one that involves going the greatest distance, always has precedence. So, whereas in the UK you use a different entry lane for right as against left turns there is absolutely no reason to do so in Spain. This isn't particularly important where there is no traffic but it certainly makes big and busy roundabouts in cities quite interesting. As well as the priorities being different the only necessary turn signal is one to show that you are leaving the roundabout. That British thing of signalling to show you're staying in the roundabout and then changing turn signals to show you're leaving is not the Spanish way. And, as most Spanish drivers seem to have forgotten where they put the turn signal controls that leads to even extra fun in roundabouts. 

When we got here to Pinoso, if my memory serves me well, there were six roundabouts within the Pinoso boundary. We now have nine. The three extra ones have all been built since 2018. Prettifying the roundabouts seems to be quite important. One of the Pinoso ones has a huge thing built out of blocks of local marble - I've heard it called The Coliseum and Stonehenge. Outside Abanilla they have one with artificial grass and with a replica of the big stone Archbishop's Cross that they have atop their local mountain. The one by the Dos Mares Shopping centre in San Javier has a jet trainer. At la Romana there are twin marble towers. There are others with really old olive trees, with fishing boats, with wine barrels and sculptures. I often wonder about the one out at Salado Alto which is sown with lots of stones that look like the standing stones at Carnac. I'm sure some bewildered 29th Century archaeologist will fall back on the old chestnut of religious significance to explain them. Of course the maintenance of the roundabouts can be a bit hit and miss. Weeds adorn more than their fair share. 

Two of the older roundabouts in Pinoso have been getting a bit of a facelift recently. The one at the entrance to Pinoso, from Monóvar on the CV83, now boasts and awful lot of concrete. The remodelling though has left the three pine trees, similar to the ones which feature on the town's coat of arms, in place. The masonry sign embellished with the town coat of arms is still there to show why the roundabout is as it is. 

The other roundabout, the one where the CV836 comes in from Yecla or, if you prefer, the one where the CV83, as an extension of the RM427, comes in from Jumilla, has also been getting a facelift. There they have coloured and contoured the concrete. I'm sure you know, but, just in case you don't, the roads with the CV prefix belong to the Comunitat Valenciana whilst the ones that begin RM are in the Región de Murcia. In the same vein if it were a national road it would have an N designation, or maybe an A for Autovía or motorway.

I had wondered about all that concrete. Before the titivation the roundabouts were mainly soil and gravel. It's not exactly that we're short of greenery round here but it did seem slightly perverse to lay tons and tons of concrete in what are supposed to be environmentally aware times. In that way that things have of co-inciding, of happenstance, I was listening to an interview on the radio and they got to talking about roundabouts. The group being interviewed were an action group that is trying to replant trees and bushes all over Spain, their name is Arriba las ramas or something like Up with branches! Their spokesperson said that a trend in several cities was to plant roundabouts with native species. Trees, bushes and plants that can look after themselves without the need for costly maintenance. The provision of a habitat for local beasts was a bit of a side benefit. Obviously that's not a trend around here.

I'd mentioned the concrete to Maggie as we drove past. I wondered about the rain. When it rains around here it often rains in shedloads. With the gravel and soil on the roundabouts the water had somewhere to escape to. I can envisage that same rain cascading off the concrete into the roadway. Mind you, if they have architects for roundabouts I suppose they know about drains too!

The photos are of three of our Pinoso roundabouts.

Out for a run in the motor

I went to Castilla la Mancha yesterday. Just the bottom bit, the part nearest home, bordering Murcia. I'd intended to go further, to a place called Argamasilla de Alba, one of the villages that claims to be the unnamed village where the Knight of the Sad Countenance lived, the one at the start of the el Quijote book. Then it dawned just how far it was so, when I was just about to join the Albacete bound motorway, I had a look at a paper map that I had in the car and chose a place that was in the middle of a bundle of mountains where the roads looked very wiggly. 

The place was called Riópar. I made a bit of a diversion to stop at a reservoir which the sign said was 6kms from the main road. It was actually over 18kms to the dam wall but it was an interesting run nonetheless. It was also the first time in Spain that the "beware deer" sign was telling the truth, at least for me - four deer bounded in front of the car and disappeared into the long grass. Riópar turned out to have next to nothing to look at. The bar I went to for a drink and a sandwich didn't even have toilets but they did offer sliced tomatoes on the sandwich which was another Spanish first for me.

In Riópar I set the SatNav for Alcaraz, which I vaguely thought I may have visited before. Jane, the SatNav voice, didn't get at all angry when I took no notice of her at the turn for Riópar el Viejo. Again there was nothing much to look at but an old looking church and a nicely disordered cemetery. On the drive to Alcaraz the car climbed through the sun dappled pine forests (well they looked like pines to me) and went through yet another pass that was over 1,000 metres - I'd gone over one earlier that was over 1,100 metres (3,608 ft) - and even as I drove home across a flat plain there was another. High country. Alcaraz was nice enough, I had been there before, with a main square full of big impressive buildings. There were nice views to the olive tree planted hillside opposite but in the whole day I probably walked less than a couple of kilometres. Most of the time I was in the car, windows open, radio loud enough to compete with the wind noise and often going slowly enough to appreciate the countryside I was passing through. 

And it was the countryside that I enjoyed most. Just driving through Spain. Whenever we go to the neighbouring town of Yecla Maggie comments on the beauty of wide valley, thick with vineyards, that we pass through. From Jumilla to the A30 motorway the road glides between mountain chains to left and right which, I don't know quite how to describe it, just reek of Spain. The colours, the dark hills, the bright crops, the dusty yet green valley floor, flat but rolling, tranquil yet always active. 

As I drove up the hillside from Riópar to Alcaraz the deserted road twisted and snaked like so many that I've driven in Spain. I could have stopped to take photos tens of times but I've tried it before. Photos don't capture the heat, the sounds, the smells or even the look. I've grown to really appreciate the landscapes we have all around us and even on the humdrum runs it often strikes me how beguiling it all is. But I did stop for one last snap, not far from Hellín. The plain went on and on and on as it so often does in Castilla la Mancha and the colours were stupendous. At least I think so.

Mind you I should add that I grew to love the Cambridgeshire Fens too so maybe I'm easily pleased.

Road signs

There are a lot of road signs in Spain. Most of them are pretty standard and give orders, warnings or advice in the way that road signs do all across the world. Some of them though, particularly speed restriction signs can be really difficult to work out.

In general there are fixed speed limits on roads which do not need to be signed. They are the default. They vary for different types of vehicles so I'll limit myself to cars. On motorways the speed limit is 120k/h, on roads with a wide hard shoulder it's 100, on standard two lane roads it's 90 and in towns it's 50k/h. All of these speed limits can be amended by the usual round sign with a red border and the black number on a white background. I didn't realise till I was checking details for this post that there is also a general minimum speed limit which is half the maximum. So you could be fined for going faster than 120k/h or slower than 60k/h on a motorway.

There is also an interesting exception to the 90k/h rule. Where there are no signs on a normal two way road you can exceed the speed limit by 20k/h during an overtaking manoeuvre.

Speed limit signs and no overtaking signs are everywhere on Spanish roads. I often wonder if someone powerful has a brother in law who makes road signs because, at times, the proliferation of them seems so excessive. It's very normal for instance to count down from the open road as you approach a town or a hazard such as a roundabout. 80k/h, twenty metres, 70k/h, twenty metres, 40k/h.

One of the key places where there are no overtaking signs and speed restrictions on what would normally be considered "the open road" is around a junction. These signs are usually backed up by changing the central road markings to single continuous white lines. These signs can be odd. Often there will, for instance, be a 60k/h sign a couple of hundred metres before a junction but, after the junction there will be nothing to say that the restriction has been lifted. Sometimes there are signs to mark the end of the no overtaking rule which I always take as showing that you can speed up again but, often, you seem to have to presume that once the hazard has been passed you are back to the general speed limit. In the case of a T junction this can mean that there are different speed limits on the opposite sides of the road because the hazard is only important on the side of the road where the junction is.

Another interseting one is where the sign is more descriptive. For instance there is an 80k/h limit on the way through a wide spot in the road outside Pinoso called Casas Ibañez. A few metres inside the 80 zone is a second sign which says 50k/h in the crossing. A few hundred metres later there is a second 80k/h sign. So I know where the 50k/h restrction ends but I have no idea where it starts.

And then, there are the completely contradictory signs. In the photo at the top of this entry the 20k/h sign is obvious but, on the road, the markings say 30k/h. Actually I understand that the cycle way marked in red is actually at variance with the rules for bikes which says that they should keep as close to the edge of the road as possible and means that cyclists using the track could actually be fined.

Hey, ho!