Skating on thin ice

I'm going to tell you some things that I think Spaniards think about the British. You may notice the teensy weensy little flaw here. Actually though, when I say what Spanish people think I should change that to what several Spaniards have said to me, over the years, about Britain and the British. So my Englishness is not, really, a handicap. When I say Britain and the British, I actually mean England and the English. Occasionally the Scots get a mention, because of the supposed similarity to the Catalans and because Mel Gibson, like all Scottish men, wore a skirt. No Spaniard I've met has ever voiced their opinion about the Welsh or the Northern Irish. 

Lots of Spaniards think that we are the only country in the world that drives on the other side of the road. This belief is usually mixed with an undertone that suggests we English are a bit full of ourselves. After all, don't we use different measures for length and weight too? I know, as do you, that there are about 70 or so countries that do the same, road-wise, from biggish places like South Africa and Malaysia to small places like Belize. Faced with this reality, those Spaniards who know, point out that this is a probably a remnant of our thirst for Empire. Again, I often get a whiff of Spanish mistrust of British cockiness. They really want to remind me about Blas de Lezo.

Lots of Spaniards think that British food is terrible. The only typical English dish that most Spaniards know is Fish and Chips. You and I may think that Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding is well known, but it isn't. My comeback to any Spaniard who started on this journey used to be a list of lots of other traditional British dishes from Shepherd's Pie and Bubble and Squeak to Bangers and Mash or Steak and Kidney Pie. Later I changed tack. I would argue that, whilst pizza may be Italian in origin, it is now a world food. The list of pizzas available from a Spanish pizzeria is quite different to the list of pizzas available in a Nepalese or Neapolitan pizzeria. Following the same logic, I would point out the breadth of dishes, and restaurants, that litter the British landscape. We Britons have plundered the world's cuisine. We feed our children Mexican or Japanese without blinking. We have taken dishes from across the world and made them our own. British Chilli con Carne, Spaghetti Bolognese, Red Thai Curry, Chicken Tikka Masala and so on have very little in common with the original source dish (if there is one) but those dishes are now as British as The Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben. Anyway, what are we comparing? Half the world eats chicken and chips or steamed mussels.

Spaniards think that the UK has a terrible climate. They're probably right. I was in the UK for the first time for ages a little while ago and the greyness of the light was a bit of a shock to me. Mind you the Spanish seem to forget that Asturias and the Basque Country, in fact much of Spain, is hardly sun baked in Autumn and Winter and until the Mediterranean builders learn about cavity wall insulation, insulation in general, doors that fit and effective heating systems, the winter in the Med, inside at least, is always going to be less pleasant than winter indoors in the UK. 

Spaniards think that most British tourists are drunken louts keen to jump off balconies and be sick in the streets of Magaluf. Unfortunately, there's more than a seed of truth in that. The cultured Brit in Toledo, there to see the Velázquez, and the placidly normal family holidaying in Torremolinos, aren't so noticeable whilst the dildo wielding fat bloke in San Antonio is. Even more so now that socks with sandals and Bri-Nylon shirts have disappeared from most wardrobes.

This last one I would have forgotten about if it hadn't been for my barber. I was complaining about the skyrocketing price of electric and fuel in general. His response was that electric prices would hardly worry such a rich bunch as we old, retired Britons with our high pensions and massive accumulated wealth. It reminded me of our early years here when there were lots of stories of Spanish families being amazed that they were able to unload their inherited, white elephant, big, old, country house, miles from anywhere and without services, to Britons who ne'er raised an eyebrow at the plucked from the air, mickey take, of a price. Fortunately for us, post Brexit, it's the Belgians and the Dutch who have inherited that branding.

The open road

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 building there's unlikely to be any acknowledgement either but that's another post.

Most Britons complain about Spanish driving. Mind you most Spaniards I have ever talked to complain about Spanish driving too just as all Britons complain about British driving. Saudis don't complain about other Saudi drivers except after the bump.

Signalling is something that Spanish drivers don't seem to be keen on. Again I have seen facetious Facebook videos from Arkansas State Troopers demonstrating what turn indicators are used for and how they operate. Maybe it's not a uniquely Spanish problem. This lack of signalling is particularly problematic in roundabouts. 

Spanish roundabouts have a different system to the one in use in the UK.  Basically you have to be in the outside lane to leave the roundabout (just to be clear about this I mean the lane that has would involve driving the longest distance around the roundabout). The outside lane has priority over the inside lanes. Not that it's the recommended system but this means that even in the biggest city with lots of traffic and, say, a five lane roundabout your "safest" bet is to take the outside lane and to go round and round in the same lane till you reach your exit. It's not the method that the traffic authorities suggest but the "approved" version at times includes a lane change which is sometimes impossible to achieve. If you are in one of the inside lanes and there is a car outside of you then you have to give way. It is not the best system and, effectively, it makes all but the outside lane redundant. As you may expect, in reality, people use all the lanes and do what they can not to bump into each other. The rules also only require drivers to signal their intention to leave the roundabout or to change lane which is effectively the same thing. No turn signal means the vehicle intends to continue circling the roundabout. So, if you're waiting to enter a roundabout and there is no turn signal from the approaching vehicle you should wait. As signalling is considered to be a waste of time by nearly everybody it's an absolute lottery as to whether a car will keep coming or turn off.

If signalling is only for the woolly minded and weak then so, for some, is leaving any space between your car and the car in front. Most of the time the traffic just goes pootling along without any problem but if something is going too slowly the line of vehicles behind will drive as though they were in one of those Secret Service Convoys you see in the films. A metre or two between vehicles at most. This is usually a spectator sport for me because I leave plenty of space between the front of my car and the back of the vehicle I'm following. That's a distance for me to control. Not so for the driver behind me who often seems quite convinced that by closing the gap to the back of my car to some 30cms or so I will speed up. I often wonder where the driver behind thinks I am going to go. Boxed in by a vehicle in front and a not to be crossed white line to the left there is nowhere for me to go. I really don't understand their reasoning unless they are fans of doggy style and/or anal sex and find the rear of my car in some way exciting. 

Another quite interesting and problematic thing are the speed limit signs. Not the idea of speed limits but the signs for those limits. Spain is littered with signs. The general rule is to give way to traffic to your right but normally, where a minor road meets a major road, the signs override that generic rule and precedence is with the main road. There is though, usually, a sign to limit the speed as you pass the junction. On a typical 90km/h two lane road the speed limit across the junction is 60km/h. The majority of traffic doesn't slow to 60 but most people slacken off a little. I had a Guardia Civil car tailing me as I got to one of these signs. Discretion being the better part of valour I slowed to keep to the speed limit and the Guardia car almost rammed me from behind. It's the same sort of thing when approaching a roundabout. Presuming that we're on a normal two lane, 90km/h road there will be a sign maybe 200 metres out from the roundabout to say 70km/h and then 50 metres out another to say 40 km/h. It's a favourite trick of the Guardia Civil traffic cars to put their speed traps just past the sign because any average driver will be slowing for the approaching hazard but they will still be doing more than the speed limit as they pass the radar.

Just two last things. Although they are dying out now Spain used to have lots of junctions with a sort of horseshoe shape turn. Rather than stopping in the middle of the road to make a cross traffic turn you would drive into the horseshoe and then stop to check whether it was safe to proceed. Most have been replaced by roundabouts, though some still exist on quieter roads.  

This is from a driving test sample. The correct answer is the orange route.

The other thing is that in the past if someone was wandering around the road, going alternatively quickly and then slowly I used to presume they were drunk or stoned. Nowadays I just presume that they have an incredibly important WhatsApp message to type. And isn't that something you recognise too?

Life in the UK

I've just been back to the UK. Here are a few things I noticed.

Beer. I went in a pub and bought a pint of bitter. I had no idea what to ask for from all the strangely named brews but whatever I bought tasted like proper British beer. I have nothing against the beer I can get in any bar in Spain but the stuff I was buying in England was much more interesting. I had to be sure though so I visited a fair number of pubs.

Heat. It's hot in the UK. It was sometimes a tad cold outside but inside it was roasting. I haven't walked around in shirt sleeves inside in Spain for months. It was horribly dark though. Grey.

Streetfood. From time to time people eat in the street in Spain but, generally, only where there is some sort of event - like a Mediaeval Fair or fiesta. In the UK people were walking down the street eating all sorts of take away food. In Cambridge the woman on the bench next to me polished off a whole tray of sushi using chopsticks whilst the wind blew and the sky drizzled.

Restaurants, takeaways and food outlets were everywhere. We have plenty of bars and restaurants here too but the huge variety of food in the UK was noticeable.

Shops seemed much more adventurous than the shops I have become used to. There are plenty of interesting places in bigger cities here but I was in St Ives and Ely, as much as Cambridge, and even there the breadth of retail was impressive.

Work. Lots of people asked me about my work and I responded by asking about theirs. Work is a long way down the list of conversational topics in Spain: long after family, food, Spanish, the weather etc.

Money. No wonder everyone in the UK waves their credit card at the machine to pay for everything. Things seemed expensive to us though I suppose price bears a direct relationship to income. Nonetheless things do cost a lot of pounds and you would need to carry a lot of cash to keep up. I know young people use credit cards more than older people here in Spain but the terminals are not as obvious and ubiquitous as they are in England.

I was constantly taken unawares by cars driving on the wrong side of the road. More than once I thought a car was out of control simply because it was on the side of the road I am no longer accustomed to.

English. Everyone tells me that the UK is full of people from different countries but it was great to be able to speak freely and competently. Well except in Starbucks where successfully buying a cup of coffee seemed to require passing the specialist subject round on Mastermind.

Police. There weren't any. Short of the vested and impressively armed police at the airport I didn't see a police officer on foot. In Spain the police walk around all the time.

Bags. We still get plastic bags when we buy things in Spain. It struck me as a good thing that they are not given away with gay abandon in the UK but it did leave me struggling with armfuls of small items at times.

Skin. I nearly forgot this. In all seriousness I asked Maggie's niece if there was a fashion for women to wear very white face makeup with bright red lipstick and pronounced eye makeup. The answer was no. Apparently Britons are a fair bit paler skinned than Spaniards.

And a special mention for the guided bus. It's an ordinary bus that can be driven around the streets but, between Cambridge and St Ives the bus runs along the route of the old train lines in a sort of concrete conduit with little guide wheels sticking out to the side. Most impressive.

Driving home the other way

Now that I work in Cieza my route to work has changed. It's about about 60 kms each way and the journey time - that is the time from when, with seat belt fastened and radio playing I accelerate away from our front gate to the moment I park up outside my workplace - is about 45 minutes. Even with my primitive arithmetical skills I can work out that means I average just 80kph or 50mph.

On the way to Cieza from Culebrón the left from our track onto the main CV83 would be an illegal manoeuvre involving crossing a solid white line and hatched areas. Should the car around the corner be Guardia Civil that would be a 300€ fine and goodness knows how many points off the spotless 15 of my licence. Would I do that or would I be more likely to make the legal right turn, cross into the village, turn around in front of Eduardo's and rejoin the CV83 heading out towards Pinoso? The choice, as that voice on Blind Date used to say, is yours.

Towards Pinoso then, at the roundabout just before the town off to the right skirting the industrial estate and the open land where the bullocks are chased around by the local lads at Fiesta time in August. I've wondered about stopping a couple of times to take a snap up the hillside there because with the morning sunshine the houses on the hillside in the Santa Catalina area look very colourful and jolly. Left at the next roundabout then and skirting the North of Pinoso before clearing the town and heading out towards Jumilla. Careful of the speed limit through Casas Ibañez - lots of stories there about speed traps - and across the border into the Murcia Region. Off to the right the Sierra del Carche and its 1372 metre peak. All along the road small hamlets, cultivated land - lots of vines and olives and almonds - a modern bodega and quite a lot of fallow or maybe unusable land.

The road is relatively straight with almost no traffic and the car tends to settle at something comfortable. It would be easy to find myself exceeding the 90kph open road speed limit. There are a few bends just before and past the failed Venta Viña P Restaurant and Los Olmos, the very strangely located kart racing track, hotel and restaurant complex. After a while the road straightens and drops with a great view out to the Sierra de Sopalmo - a big wall of hills and, in the distance, the A33 motorway.

Up to now I've been heading basically East but somewhere around here I want to start heading South on the A33 which runs down to Murcia City. Until quite recently I would have used one of the  trunk roads, the National or N344 to make that journey but, in 2012 the first 30kms or so of the Motorway, the Autovía, A33 between Blanca and close to Jumilla was opened having cost some 122 million euros. Eventually the A33 will connect motorways coming out of Andalucia and Murcia with motorways in Alicante which will make all sorts of routes faster but will principally create an inland route to cut the corner on the way up to France. There is a snag though. Although the Pinoso road is the principal East West road in the area the road builders, in their wisdom, chose not to add direct access to the motorway. Instead I have to drive a few kilometres on the old, and now very quiet, ex main road or I can cut the corner and go through the village of Encebras. I like the Encebras route despite the 20kph speed limit, which I obviously keep to, because there is the vague chance of seeing somone on foot. I did pass a tractor the other day but otherwise no vehicles so far. And Encebras has street lighting which always strikes me as bizarre for a village that can have no more than 50 inhabitants.

I do about 18kms on the motorway. Nice black tarmac and clear white lines with very little traffic. So far the journey has taken about 20 minutes. The motorway bit takes another ten minutes or so. Suddenly there's a built up area just off the motorway, the village built around the old, 1868, railway station for Blanca. It's 10km to Blanca but there's Spanish railways for you. Apparently 800 people live in Estación de Blanca but all I notice really are the Blancasol agricultural co-op and the bar where the Guardia Civil park up for a mid morning coffee. It's quite a strange road layout to get onto the RM402 which connects the motorway I've just come off with the motorway I want to join, the A30, heading out of Murcia for Albacete and on to Madrid. There is a marked change too from countryside to messy urban in this bit of Murcia and that means much more traffic.

I have to take a bit of a left turn across traffic which is quite an unusual operation on a free flowing Spanish road. It's much more common to send you right into a little semicircle to allow you to turn left by crossing traffic from a stop sign. The junction is marked by a strange, single, abandoned block of green and white flats built in the middle of nowhere. The junction also has unexpected adverse camber and leads into a another slip road which is both the exit and entry to the A30. That can be fun at times. Some eight kilometres heading back North now, off on the Cieza turn, a couple of roundabouts and into the entrance to the town. Bonica Cieza it says on a big sign just there, a very Murcian way to suggest that the town is pretty. Certainly the local inhabitants seem to stick up for it and what I've seen looks nice enough. Down past the park and a big sort of esplanade which is always full of people out for a bit of a stroll in the evening, full twist around a roundabout and then a right turn onto the bit of wasteland that surrounds the school where I do my English teaching. Then it's just a case of parking up and avoiding any large shards of glass from any newly broken beer bottles from the night before.

The route home isn't an exact repeat but my guess is that you've taken as much as you can now so let's pretend it is.

Driving home

I work in Fortuna. I live in Culebrón - you my have worked that out from the blog title. It's a drive of only 37km and it's not that interesting. But blogs need feeding no matter how mundane the subject matter.

When I leave work, just after eight, it's dark. This will surprise no-one living in the Northern Hemisphere. Fortuna has Christmas lights. Not bad for such a small place on a tight, building bubble hit, budget. The traffic in Fortuna is pretty mad for a village of just under 10,000 population. Cars and vans, or at least their drivers, behave in erratic and unfathomable ways. I'm always relieved when the car and I clear the last set of traffic lights and drive out of the built up area still in one piece.

Sometimes, just by the lights, the Barinas bus, which comes up from Murcia, is pulling out as I get to the stop. We are going to share the route for a few kilometres. Why there is a bus from Murcia to Barinas (population 946) escapes me.

Baños de Fortuna is the first population after Fortuna, it "belongs" to Fortuna. It has a thermal spring, Victorian style hotels and a modern housing estate full of us foreigners. The street lighting peters out just after Baños. The landscape is pretty barren anyway, desert landforms, a bit lunar even. It's a steady climb up to Salado Alto on a road with an 80 kph limit which nobody sticks to. There are a couple of bars and restaurants in Salado. The posher one isn't open in the evening but the bar is. As I pass I often think that the clientele, who stand out in the lit interior Edward Hopper like, look like Brits. Maybe we have a little outpost there.

More of a climb, quite a steep climb, on a road that snakes to just the right degree to be able to enjoy cutting the apexes of the curves. Soon after cresting the top of the climb there is the Repsol garage on the left just by the junction where the bus will turn right to Barinas. The petrol station is pretty brightly lit but the light always seems a bit feeble set amidst the blackness of the Murcian countryside. There's a bar by the side of the petrol station too. They do a set meal at lunchtime for either 6€ or 7€.

Bit of level running, sharp right hander and climbing again up towards Algorrobo which means Carob tree. It's one of those roads with three lanes so that you can overtake the heavy heaving lorries. To be honest with the amount of traffic that there is on the RM 422 road it's hardly ever necessary.

We're on the level for a while now. In fact I think there's even a touch of downhill just before some incredibly bright street lights and a signpost which says that the single row of houses is called Los Fernandos. Still on the level but then a bit of a hill with Cañada de la Leña off to the right (Firewood Drove) and Cañada del Trigo (Wheat Drove) to the left. On the Trigo turn there's a cement works or gravel processing plant that paints the nearby landscape with dust and shines out in the dark.

Over to the right we can make out the huge lighting rigs that illuminate the largest open cast quarry in Europe at Monte Coto. We're still in Murcia but the quarry is in Alicante. Sometimes when the cloud is low it can look quite demonic. The road is flat and level again before one more hill that crests out by the Volver Bodega. We've just crossed into Alicante and the RM 422 has become the CV 836. The letters show they are regional roads - CV for the Valencian Community and RM for the Region of Murcia

The road drops down from the bodega towards Rodriguillo, one of the villages that makes up Pinoso. A quick zigzag to go through a couple of roundabouts and out past the garden centre and up the slope into Pinoso. Pass the cemetery and now we're in Pinoso proper. 50 kph speed restriction with the Co-operative bodega to the left and the marble and wine museum, tourist office and sports centre to the right. Into town with some splendid Christmas decorations twinkling away for now. There's a new bar to the right too - it opened about a week ago. It's owned by a German chap.

Only a right on the Badén and then out on the Monóvar road to get to our house in Culebrón. Fortuna is at 198 metres above sea level and Pinoso is at 474 so we've only climbed 276 metres or 905 feet but it's usually good for knocking off around 3ºC from the temperature. The car is nice and warm but it's not so warm as I step into the fresh air to open the gate. Good to be home though. Time to get the kettle on.

No need to worry

Driving licences are a regular bar conversation topic amongst expats in Spain.

One line runs something like "We're European citizens, we have a European driving licence, we're entitled to drive." At the other end of the spectrum there's the "We're resident here so we have to change our licences for Spanish ones." Actually it's somewhere in between. Once you're resident there's a time limit on using the UK licence unless you register it with the Spanish authorities. It's easier and a bit cheaper to simply exchange. No need for another test or anything and for the first licence at least you don't have to do the medical.

At the beginning of July I took my licence to the local driving school, filled in a bundle of forms and handed over 75€ so that the chap from the driving school would do all the legwork for me. I could have popped down to Alicante, stood in a couple of long queues and done it myself but I chose the lazier, and much more expensive, option.

I forgot all about it for a while. The chap had said he'd phone when I needed to hand over my UK licence. Nowadays I understand that nothing much official happens very quickly, especially over the summer, and I trusted the bloke to do his job. But eventually I remembered and my British sensibility kicked in. I went to ask. 

"Should be soon," he said, "I've been getting the June ones back recently." 

"My problem," I said, "is calling into your office as you're not open on Saturdays." 

"No problem, I can always open up for you on a Saturday if I need to."

No need to worry then.