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 by John Clare
On the Road in the Algarve
The motorways are dodgy. The
main roads are interesting. The side roads are appalling.
There is this motorway that runs parallell to the coast in the Algarve.
It has a pompous name: The Infante da Sangres. It isn't very busy: at
least, not in the off-season. The cambers are somewhat intriguing, as
they sometimes slope the wrong way, which means one's car has a
tendency to veer off the carriageway at high speed as you go round a
curve.
Remains of an ancient race are also to be found on the motorways.
Whenever you reach a bridge you will find evidence of Theodolite Man.
There is this intriguing adjustable metal plate which has been inserted
across the carriageway to take up the slack should the bridge or the
carriageway, or both, have moved a bit. Dont buy a house near a bridge:
you will be kept awake at night by the clang every time a car goes over
the metal. Twice. Once approaching the bridge, and again on leaving it.
It's a great place to take the kids. No need to go on the dodgems of
course, the Portuguese roads in general are an excellent substitute.
The bumps are even for real, and you could well meet up with a few dead
bodies, or wind up dead yourself. But as an added bonus there is the
magic carpet. You drive at 120 kilometres an hour (note the kil in
kilometres) along this nice smooth surface, and then suddenly the
bottom falls out of your world, as you plunge down this mega hollow,
and almost immediately swoop back up again. It's guaranteed to make the
kids squeal with delight.
Driving in Portugal is always an interesting exercise. You never know
what you might encounter on a simple journey. Pack an overnight bag,
the camera, some food, plenty of tools, and a couple of first aid boxes.
I am driving into town to an appointment, along the N124 into Silves. I
round a corner and almost collide with a line of stationery traffic. I
ram on the brakes and activate the emergency lights.
A hundred metres down the road is a narrow bridge. At the far end are
two lorries. The first is astride the parapet, the second is astride
the first. And there is a JCB trying to disentangle them.
One has obviously come round the corner at least partially on the wrong
side of the road. But the problem is, each lorry is wider than half the
road. Even if each had been right up the verge they would still have
had a prang.
I note there are now four great gashes in the stone walls either side
of the approach to the bridge. You dont have to be a rocket scientist
to work out how they got that way.
A respectable-looking middle-aged lady shrugs and says she has had four
accidents herself. It is part of life, isn't it?
The main carriageway usually lacks maintenance, which means it looks
like a crossword puzzle. You have to fill in the gaps. I have even
noticed (just in time) a hole in the road which leads to a water main.
The metal cover, which should have been laying neatly parallel to the
surface of the road, was in actual fact tilted at an angle of about
80˚. If I'd hit that at 90 kph I would have needed a rocket scientist
to work out my trajectory, and it certainly wouldn't have involved
carrying on forwards down the road.
The road builders of Portugal are also rather quick to lose interest.
To be precise, they lose interest in the road right at its edge. What
happens an inch away from the tarmac is not their concern, which means
that when you meet a truck coming the other way with its wheels partly
on your side of the road, you have a problem. Do you stay on the
highway and hit the truck? Do you move one set of wheels off the
highway into what looks like a steep ditch, or a valley floor some feet
below the road surface? Or do you try and hug the edge, with your
near-side wheels scraping the edge of the tarmac, ripping chunks out of
the rubber as you test your brinkmanship?
Drive defensively, says a wise man in the letters section of the local
paper. What he really means is Stay at Home!
And then, of course, there are the rest of the roads; the caminos. Most
of these are dust tracks in the summer, or mud pits in the winter. And
dont trust the puddles. Some are not just deep, they are
axle-judderingly steep and deep. After the rains, great wedges of the
caminos collapse, and roll downhill. It is not unusual to find half the
road piled up at the bottom of a hill, presenting a truly awsome
road-block. It is also not unsual to find that what was once a single
carriageway has overnight turned into a dual-carriageway, with a great
chasm down the middle.
Some of the minor roads turn from tarred surfaces into dust at a
moment's notice, and then turn back to tarmac a few kilometres further
along. These minor roads may be marked on some maps, but dont be
seduced into thinking they are always there. They come and go with the
seasons, and what is passable on monday is not necessarily passable on
tuesday. A landslip here, a temporary river bed there, and you need to
re-think your itinary.
Portugal is one of those places where the roads often follow the
rivers. In fact where I used to live in Ferragudo there is a channel in
the middle of the road which is grandly referred to as a canal, but
which doubles as estuary and wet weather riverbed.
An estuary down the middle of a road? Well, yes, the tide comes up it.
It's fascinating watching as a six inch bore moves purposefully at a
walking pace up the channel.
About a hundred metres beyond where I used to live the canal stops, or
rather, it and the road manage to hit the same level. This means that
during the wet weather the road is the river. Coming down this road in
the rainy season on a moped is a rather risky business, and as a
motorist one feels obliged to drop to a crawl to drive past such
riders, otherwise they would get a rather sudden shower.
Generally speaking, new roads are created by sending in a bulldozer
which levels the surface, and bringing in more earth where needed to
make up the height. This is then left for a few days, or even a few
months, until the rain has settled it a little. Then some gravel is
thrown down on it. This is then rolled into the earth, and along comes
a machine which drops tar all over it. It is rolled again, and lo,
there is a shiny new road.
This is presently happening all over Portugal, funded by European
grants coming from the pockets of hard-working tax-payers. Someone
ought to make a movie of it to show on t.v. It's always nice to know
where the money goes (or where some of the money goes, according to a
few cynics in the bar: apparently most of the EU funds for roads go
into the pockets of politicians and consultants, and from there to the
marinas where you can see the results bulging and shiny, as they swing
from their mooring ropes).
Some years back a new stretch of road was opened between Silves and
Lagoa. The old road crossed where they were putting in a new motorway
link road. This new stretch of road was opened on monday. We all drove
happily down it for the next two days, but on the third day a hole
appeared half way along. Not just any old hole, but a great crater
which we had to swerve to avoid. The following day, five more appeared,
and so the road was totally impassable, and it had to be closed for
repairs. There were six sizable craters in a stretch of brand new
highway barely 200 metres long. It took the road menders a fortnight to
repair the damage.
Closer to the coast there is a small camino winding its way down to a
beach. This road has now been upgraded. It used to be a good old
fashioned dust track, but with the arrival of a suitable purse of
European funding things changed drastically, and two labourers were
hired, and a wheeelbarrow was bought, and some tar was found from
somewhere. For the next two months these two gents pushed their
wheelbarrow along the track spreading a fork of tar here, and a fork of
tar there, which they stamped level with their boots, and a new road
was made.
Maybe there was a complaint. Maybe a Euro-taxpayer came along and
demanded better value for his money. I dont know the whole storey, but
obviously words were said, and a couple of months later the whole road
was re-surfaced using conventional machinery.
The roads may seem like some kind of dodgem track, but there are also
the dodgem drivers to cope with. A sizable proportion of Portuguese
drivers quite simply drive to kill.
Very few can have taken any driving test. There is a law, if I
understand it correctly, which says that everyone must pay for at least
32 lessons in driving. I dont think the law states that anyone actually
has to take those lessons, or go in for a test after having taken them.
There are two basic problems which frighten the wits out of me.
Portuguese drivers tailgate. There have been many occasions when a
motorist has been so close behind me that I have not been able to see
his vehicle in my wing mirrors. That means they are about a metre from
me, travelling at 80 or 90 kph. They also overtake on blind bends.
Whatever their lessons do provide (if anyone bothers to turn up for
them) they obviously do not instill any sense of cause and effect, any
sense of what it actually means to travel at speed along a road when
someone else is travelling at speed in the opposite direction. There
seems to be no thought for any other road user, and no concept that
something unexpected may happen.
I drive out of the airport carpark at about nine o'clock in the
morning. I go up to the perimeter roundabout, and turn down the road to
Faro. I have travelled perhaps half a kilometre on this lovely spring
morning before we come to a halt. There is a traffic jam. On the other
side of the road is a line of cars. There are five of them. I dont know
why the first one stopped, but the following four were travelling so
close they all piled into each other. There they stand on the highway,
each subsequent car with its nose firmly wedged up the trunk of the car
in front. And the drivers are standing there looking most puzzled. "How
on earth has this happened? It really is muit complicad."
It is just before Christmas. I am driving towards a roundabout. We are
on a dual carriageway. The car to my right swerves straight across in
front of me missing my front lights by about an inch. The driver then
lurches back into the inside lane, and after about thirty yards swerves
back out to the right hand lane, all without any indication. I panic
and drop right back to keep clear of this maniac. It is a car full of
ladies, all talking and gesticulating. The car behind me seizes it's
chance. There is a space between me and the car in front that is big
enough for two or three cars to park in. This space must be filled. He
overtakes me. The lady driver in front sees some friends by the side of
the road, and decides to stop for a chat. She is driving close to the
centre of the road. She stops, right there in the middle of the road,
almost dead on.
The guy behind her doesn't have a hope in hell. After all, the
visibility ahead is good. We have a straight road for 200 meters and
nothing is in front on either side of the road, and we are accelerating
out of town. I realise I cant stop in time, so decide to take evasive
action. No problem, they are driving so far out in the road I can
undertake. I head for the verge, and only then notice it represents a
foot drop off the tarmac to the dirt. I will screw the bottom of my
car, probably taking off the exhaust pipe. I try to hug the edge of the
carriageway. I think I will make it, but the impact of the second car
against the first knocks it sideways about a foot, right into my path,
and I wack him quite hard. The hit is right above my left front wheel,
and part of the bumper goes into the tyre, the rest rips, and flies up
in front of me over the top of the car, and the whole front twists. I
knock the car in front over into the crown of the road again.
I tell the story to a Portuguese lady friend. I am outraged at the
first driver just stopping in the middle of a clear road to talk to
friends. "Oh that is normal," she says.
I could have avoided hitting the guy in front if the road joined the
verge, instead of being a foot higher. It is unsafe to drive off the
carriageway when the drop is that much (or more as it sometimes is).
It is another day, another car. I am trying to get home. Getting out of
town is difficult. I can't reverse my car out because someone has
parked behind me. It only takes five minutes to find the owner, who,
all smiles, moves the offending car.
I turn right, drive down a road, and find I can't drive straight ahead
as someone has parked a waggon bang in the middle of the road, and the
owner is nowhere to be found. The car in front of me starts reversing,
so I reverse, and so does the car behind me. We turn right, and at the
end of the road have to turn right again, and I end up exactly where I
had started, so try another way out of town.
I turn left, and come up behind two cars. The front car has stopped and
a long conversation is underway. It takes about five minutes more
before we move forward again. We then stop again while some shouting
goes on, and eventually a passer-by helps by shooing a couple of dogs
out of the way. They had gone to sleep in the middle of the road:
perfectly normal here. At the main road, I wait while the driver in
front plucks up courage to move onto the highway. There are several
long gaps with no traffic, but he makes no move. I get out of my car to
ask if he is alright, and he suddenly moves out right under the wheels
of a JCB. I have to jump to avoid being crushed as the JCB driver takes
evasive action.
I drive out of town, and at the penultimate set of lights the van
driver in front falls asleep at the wheel. I have to get out again. As
I approach his van I notice him jerk awake and lurch off across the now
red lights, narrowly avoiding a car coming from the bridge. The traffic
from the bridge stops, and the lights change again, and I move forward.
Actually, that was a mistake as the traffic coming the other way seems
to have a right of way across my lane, but I eventually get out of town.
Now, one can adjust for all that has happened so far, but there is no
way to cope with what happens next. There is a short straight section
of badly surfaced road, which then enters a sharp bend, with trees
obscuring the view. I look, and decide there is no room to overtake the
truck in front of me. A second or two later, the car behind me pulls
out and overtakes me and the truck. He is doing 90kph or more right on
the corner on the wrong side of the road. I am frantically scanning the
side of the road to spot where I would leave the highway should
something come the other way. If I'd been pottering along at 70/80kph
coming the other way I would now be dead. I'm not sure how one comes to
terms with driving in a country where those conditions exist. I feel
very unsafe. Most Portuguese would be safer driving burros!
The local paper has just printed the official statistics. There have
been over 56,000 deaths on the roads in Portugal in the last 25 years.
That equates to just over 6 a day in a country of about 9 million
people. (If that statistic was the same percentage in the UK adjusted
for the population size it would have to be about 40 dead a day on the
roads. Crikey!)
Just for fun (if that's the word I'm looking for) I decided to count
the skid marks on a two kilometre stretch of road west of Silves, my
local town. I counted 30 before having to give up as a truck was coming
straight at me. And that was only on one side of the road.
Why did I do this? Am I a masochist? No. It's just that two days ago I
saw a truck astride a wall, and a little further down the road another
truck in an orange grove. And the big metal signpost was buckled at a
very weird angle.
I had a second accident a little while ago (which reminds me I must
mend what's left of the car). I moved into the outside lane of the dual
carriageway as I approached a roundabout at about 15 mph. I had to do
that because there was an accident in the inside lane. I braked as I
approached the roundabout, and skidded nicely into the car in front.
There was oil on the road, which is why we now had two lanes closed.
The police came and measured where we'd had the accident, asked to see
our documents and buggered off. No-one cleared the oil slick. On the
way home, over the length of a sixteen kilometre stretch of road, I
counted evidence of no less than 18 other accidents.
* * * * *
An article from the local newspaper tells of a lady who took lessons in
driving and then put in for a test. This lady apparently lived near
Lagoa in the Algarve. Apparently on the last lesson the instructor
warned this lady that if she wished to pass she must pay €300 to the
tester in addition to the usual test fee. On principle she refused and
failed her test. The instructor told her she could go on taking the
test as many times as she liked but would not pass until she had paid
the bribe.
The way it works is very simple. You put the €300 into an envelope and
place it under the carpet on the passenger side of the car. The tester
removes the envelope before the test and obviously passes you no matter
how bad your driving. If there is no envelope he fails you no matter
how good your driving.
The rumour that in order to pass your test you have to replicate real
live situations and drive around town with a fag in one hand and your
mobile phone in the other is, I am told, quite untrue, tho I have not
been able to verify this.
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