Life in Culebrón

The last time I was in France I was holidaying in Cataluña. It was the sign that said 20 kilometres to France or something that drew us there. Ah, the gay abandon of it all, the sweet adventure of crossing an international frontier just because we could. Free spirits and all that. So last Friday I got a speeding ticket from France written in Spanish. Some French traffic camera seems to think I was there on Christmas Eve 2016. Actually I was in Villena and so was the Mini. I bought a bottle of Laphroaig for me and a bottle of wine for Maggie as a Christmas treat. I paid with a credit card. The credit card bill is now one of my few bits of evidence that I was in Spain. At first I thought the ticket was a scam but a bit of asking around and a bit of checking some websites and it seemed real enough. A 68€ fine or 45€ with a discount for quick payment. I have 45 days from the issue of the ticket to appeal. The paperwork was pretty good; details of what and how and why, method...

When driving in Spain crossing solid white lines, in their many manifestations, is a bit of a no-no. I did it innocently in Cartagena in front of a passing police car once and got that crooked finger "come hither" symbol along with a sound telling off. On the telly the traffic cameras in the helicopters metaphorically click their tongues as lorries, cars and motorbikes, on completely deserted roads, take the direct line through the curves. Culebrón, our village, is split in half by the CV83 road - or more accurately split into something like a big bit and a little bit - and it's our part, the little bit, that is the cast aside orphan of the village. Our access road is made from dirt and it is criss crossed with rivulets carved by the occasional storms. Some of the gullies are suspension torturing deep. Our street lighting is vestigial and intermittent and about half the houses are just beyond the reach of the mains drainage. But, more than that, we are marooned be...

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...