Life in Culebrón

I'm sorry but I have to admit to enjoying Joyas sobre ruedas on the Discovery Channel - Wheeler dealers in its original. That interest explains why I asked after the hire car of a couple of friends visiting from the UK. The car had a late letter L registration - well under a year old - but it didn't have one of the emision badges or stickers on the windscreen. I mentioned this and, not surprisingly, our friends were completely in the dark about the badges. I explained. It's basically an emission thing. The idea is that electric cars, hybrids, newer petrol and diesel cars can get stickers whereas older petrol and diesel cars can't. The environmentally cleaner your motor and the fewer restrictions. The older and dirtier your car the sooner it will be forced off the road. I remembered the badges conversation when we were in Altea town centre. "Ah look, there'll be a badge on this car", I said, but there wasn't. I walked down a row of at least 50 parked ca...

I forget why, I forget what we'd been doing, I really do forget a lot of things nowadays, but we were with friends and and now it was time for lunch. The nearest place on the route back that might have restaurants was Polop so we drove into the town. We followed the signs for the ayuntamiento, the town hall. The road changed from tarmac to paving which is a sure sign that we were in the heart of the oldest part of the town, the part to expect restaurants. We passed the typical town centre buildings, the tourist office or the town hall or the parish church - again I forget. It's not that we were able to choose our route. We were funneled and shepherded, inevitably, by no entry signs and compulsory turn signs along the one way circuit through the old town. And suddenly the road became a street about two metres wide. It happens from time to time. You follow the SatNav without realising it's set to shortest route or you simply get funnelled into the old part of a town and sudde...

We were in a traffic jam this last weekend. A proper traffic jam. A traffic jam that kept stopping and starting and which we took half an hour to clear. I felt quite sorry for the bloke in the Porsche Cayenne Coupé. He was originally alongside as we put on the hazard warning lights and slowed to join the tailback. He was so pressed for time though that he had to dodge from lane to lane. It worked. He was at least 100 metres in front of us when the traffic started to move again as the RM19 motorway, the one we were on, merged into the A30 that skirts Murcia city.  I seriously don't remember the last time I was in a similar traffic jam here in Spain. We don't have traffic in the countryside. We really don't. Sometimes, where the Monóvar road meets the Yecla road in Pinoso, there's a police officer to make sure that you don't have problems turning left across traffic but that's only around the time the industrial estate kicks out. On the main roads in and out of Pi...

Driving in Spain is like driving anywhere. Well no, it's not like driving in Mumbai or Sana'a, but it is like driving in places that have reasonably organised traffic. Most people keep to most of the rules most of the time. By that I mean it's like driving in Dublin or Munich or Mirfield. The cities are busy, towns are busy but Spain has lots of space for not many people and hundreds of Spanish roads are dead quiet. Where we live the roads are very quiet. It's a joy. Last Wednesday were in Elche and I left an obvious space so a car, joining from a slip road, could pop into the main traffic flow. The driver waved in acknowledgement. I was surprised; I wondered if he were foreign, like me. Spaniards do not, generally, acknowledge any assistance on the road. Flash someone in for instance and there is, usually, no answering flash, no quick flip of the hazard lights nor any little wave. Actually, if, as a pedestrian, you hold the door for someone entering or leaving a buildi...

I went to see some old pals in Valencia the other day. They are Britons here in Spain for just a few days. It's Fallas time in Valencia when lots and lots of communities and neighbourhoods construct papier maché type figures (I have no idea what material they actually use) up to maybe 20 metres high (a guess) and then set fire to them. Valencia is the third largest city in Spain and yesterday it was chockablock with people in town for the fiesta. It's quite likely that a lot of the regular inhabitants of Valencia have fled to avoid the disruption that Fallas causes but lots more were dressed up in "traditional" dress. As an aside have you ever wondered why traditional clothes are fixed at some point in the past? Who decided that the quintessential traditional costume in an area was worn in 1876 or 1923? Why not 1976 or 1723? And what if we chose 2016 as the perfect year for a new version of traditional costume? What and how would you choose? Why fix a style anyway...

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...