Life in Culebrón

This is a piece about days out on the train. As usual I got distracted. If you're not interested in the Spanish railway system skip the next four paragraphs I was told, ages ago, that, where there are twin tracks, Spanish trains "drive" on the left. That is they use the left hand set of rails in relation to the direction they're travelling. The reason, so said my informant, was that the first railways in Spain were built by British engineers and without giving it a second thought the Britons built the system that way around. It turns out that I was lied to. It's partly true in that the first line on the peninsula did use a British Engineer but his line, from Barcelona to Mataró, opened in 1848, ran trains on the right.  As the railways boomed the first big Spanish railway company - MZA - Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Madrid a Zaragoza y Alicante - bought the Barcelona to Mataró line. They bought the direction of travel too. MZAs big competitor in the pioneering...

So I'd bought a couple of railway tickets to go up to Valencia for the Fallas. Covid 19 meant first the Fallas were postponed and then there was a general restriction on movement. I wasn't going to be using my tickets. RENFE, the train people, famed for their idiosyncratic website, emailed to say they were returning money or giving credit. They said I had to wait till today, Wednesday, for them to get their systems in place. I tried the website first. It said my tickets had been "consumed" presumably because they were dated for yesterday. I tried the special phone number. It offered a service in all the Spanish languages and in English. Splendid as my Castilian is, I went for the easy option. Lots of blurb and then the message - all our operators are busy. Press one if you would you like to be served in Castilian. I didn't press one. I tried ringing back. All our operators are busy. Over the next thirty minutes I tried a few times more. Eventually th...

Whilst I was shaving this morning, I heard a piece on the radio about changes to the rail service in Murcia. The National news has ten minute sections of local news every now and then. In the bathroom the local news comes from Murcia and in the kitchen the local news covers the Valencian Community. It's to do with signal strengths and because we are on the frontier between two regions. RENFE, the train operator and ADIF, the rail infrastructure operator, have been in the news a lot lately. Over in Extremadura there was lots of fuss about really old diesel trains breaking down all the time and leaving people stranded for hours. The people of Extremadura complained that they live in a forgotten part of the country. In fact there has been a lot of grumbling, from several parts of Spain, that all the railway money is being poured into the glamorous high speed trains whilst the much more travelled commuter lines are being largely ignored. The story was rekindled a few days ago w...

Maggie saw a news item on the telly that said that for the "puente", the long weekend, that stretches from Constitution day on Wednesday through Immaculate Conception on Friday, was pretty well booked up everywhere in Spain except in Cataluña. We supposed that was because of the political goings on there, because of the terrorist attack and because the good people of Barcelona have made it very clear how much they like tourists. The result was that there were lots of good deals to be had. We decided to go. We travelled on the train. We go on trains fairly regularly in the sense that we go on them from time to time rather than never - maybe two, three or four times a year. Well actually maybe four, six or eight times a year in that we usually go there and back. ADIF is the state owned company that owns the Spanish railway infrastructure but it's RENFE (Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles) that runs the trains. Our local stations are in Villena and Elda for conv...

I had a lot of trouble getting a job when I was a young man. One day in the 70s after another disastrous interview I was on the milk train back from London to Halifax. It was early morning when the train made an unscheduled stop in my home town of Elland presumably waiting for the signals or somesuch. Beeching had done for Elland as an official stop. I jumped out of the train (no conductor controlled doors in those days) and despite the protestations of the British Rail staff legged it over the semi derelict platforms and pushed through a hole in the wire that I knew from my boyhood adventures. It saved me the four mile hike back from the official stop in Halifax. Yesterday we decided to travel to Valencia for one last outing before I go back to work on Monday. We agreed to use  the train. Quite by chance we'd been in the station at Villena a couple of days before. That's where I got the idea. It was interesting looking at the routes of the slower trains that run on the w...

Everyone knows that Brits in Spain wear socks with sandals, go bright red in the sun and swill beer. One of those conversational topics, designed generally to use comparatives in English, with students is about countries. We always agree that one difference is on the Tube. In London everyone keeps to themselves, reading or simply looking grim faced. In Madrid on the other hand the babble between passengers is drowned out only by the occasional impromptu musical jam session. I was in Madrid the last couple of days and I'm sad to report that everyone on the metro is now glued to their mobile phones. For business suits and skaters alike their thumbs are dancing across screens catching or killing things. Earphones are everywhere to block out the surrounding world. Mobile phones, the great leveller. Madrid looked very green too. Trees all over the place and that's without going anywhere near the Retiro. Busy of course but then, if you lived in Culebrón, most places would seem bu...