By: MARK RAWCLIFFE
WHEN I moved here in mid 1992, the EN125 was the only road to get anywhere. A trip to pick up a relative or friend from the ‘cattle shed’, or Faro Airport as it is now known, was a whole day’s excursion, where you took your life in your hands on a road that was literally termed as ‘the drive of your life’.
I can remember the conversations about the Montechoro junction on the EN125 in particular. It was said that on any day, you could acquire a spare part for any car on the road, simply because of the accidents that happened there!
Hire cars were not what they are now. You were lucky then if the car had windscreen wipers, but then rain was not something the tourists saw, well not much anyway.
Car showrooms had limited stocks of cars. I recall Ford offering my mother a Fiesta and when she enquired about colour, the answer was short and sweet. “You can have any colour you want … so long as it is the white one over there!”
Roads, if you were lucky, were for the most part tarmac or calçada in the towns, but without question the majority came as standard with potholes: so much so that you thought the roads were laid and then the workers hammered great holes in to them – just for effect!
Roundabouts
I had a conversation with my father-in-law the other day, who told me that when he was a boy, they used to play football on the junction that is now the entrance to Poço Partido from the main Carvoeiro road. There was no fear of being hit by a car because only two existed in the whole of Lagoa and you could hear them coming from miles away! The b-roads, as we call them, were nothing more than dust tracks, carved by tractors and the horse and cart.
Times have moved on. Roads have improved over the years. You no longer feel that for your car to survive, you must buy a 4×4. Roundabouts appear to be the order of the day, with new ones appearing overnight in the strangest of locations. Perhaps Portugal has a ‘roundabout mountain’ in the same way that Europe had a ‘butter mountain’ many years ago.
With income and credit allowing families and individuals to be able to afford newer and more expensive cars comes the inevitable congestion and the issue of car parking. I remember a phrase taught to me soon after I moved here. “In Portugal, you don’t park, you abandon” – never a true word spoken.
Cars litter the roads, parked on corners, crossing white lines in car parking spaces. And the lack of care when parking shows how drivers view their own property as well as everyone else’s. Do you remember the days when if you knocked the car next to you, you got out, had a look, and if the owner of the vehicle was not present and there was damage, you left your number on the windscreen? So do I.
Parking problems
So what has happened here? I am extremely careful where I park. At Algarve Shopping, I park between two posts or against the wall so that way, drivers who couldn’t care if they hit you or not, can scrape their own car against the wall!
I am sick to death of dings, scrapes and dents from doors opening, and it costs me to put it right because of their ignorance. So here is my suggestion to you all. Park your car with care. Use unmovable objects to protect your investment (or at least one side of it). If the car next to you is old, tatty and bashed, park elsewhere. If there is nowhere else to park, make a visible sweep of your car for damage (and the one next to you). Most of us have mobile phones with cameras on these days, so take a photo of the car(s) next to you, in particular, the registration plate. If you return to some damage, report it to the police. Remember that paint transfer takes place on both vehicles and not just one when they meet.
Perhaps then, the inconsiderate will understand, especially if it hits them in the pocket. If you are one of the inconsiderate ones, be careful, you could end up with a rather large bill in your post box before much longer.
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