Beside the Seaside

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In Which My Journey Takes Me, Briefly, To North Korea

October 30, 2007 by Mike

Punta Umbria

Route: Olhao - (Portugal) - Ayamonte (Spain) - Punta Umbria
I arrived in Portugal from Spain on a ferry, at the mouth of a river, in the rain.

Today, 1515 miles, one month and one day later (to the minute), I left Portugal for Spain on a ferry, at the mouth of a river, in blinding hot sunshine.

--

"I just wanted to say thank you."

An elderly man had approached my table where I sat, writing my notes, drinking one last Portuguese cafezinho. I had stopped at one of the last villages before the border.

"I just wanted to say thank you. I assume she's yours? A Triumph. Such a beautiful beast. I never thought I should see one here."

The Bonnie was parked in front of the cafe. Dirty, overloaded, gorgeous in the autumn sunshine. I was the only person in sight with a bike helmet perched on my table.

He was in his 80s. Straight back, straw hat, golf trousers but I won't hold that against him. British.

"Why thank you," I smiled. I was really touched. "How very kind of you to say so. I have the keys here if you'd like to take it for a spin?"

"Better not. Broken neck, y'see."

He pointed to his neck, in case I didn't know where it was, smiled stiffly, then turned and edged his way out of the cafe and down the pavement.

--

I never did take The Picture that would sum up Portugal as I've lived it. Whether that picture is a tiled house tight by the sea, old men in cotton tank-tops and flat caps hunkered down in the shade all day on every street corner and in every bus stop -- no space for cider-chugging teenage chavs in Portugal, oh no. Maybe one of my pictures of fishermen on the cliffs will remind me in my dotage of how I've loved Portugal; maybe re-reading this guff; maybe I'll have to rely on my fond memories.

DSC06474.JPG --

I'm less than half-an-hour in to Spain. Right on the border at the mouth of the Rio Guardiana, a new holiday complex is going up on the Isla Canela. You can see, for the moment, what the island must have looked like for 1000 years. Tiny, rundown, whitewalled homes, clutter and scrub and clothes hanging, one horse tethered in the yard alongside a pile of car tyres, a dead car, corrugated iron roof: Andalucia has been poor forever, and its people have traditionally emigrated 'abroad' -- to Catalunya, the Basque Country and Madrid as well as Latin America -- in search of a better life.

Who stayed behind? The first-born son, to inherit the parents' smallholding? Or the more timid ones, those lacking in imagination and ambition?

Whoever, many of them have been rewarded beyond the limits of whatever imagination they might have had. Yes, big businessmen from the cities, scalpers, hawks, ne'er-do-wells, chancers, parasites and hustlers have made fortunes from buying land cheap and building (also cheaply) hotels and restaurants for tourists. But some of the original owners of the land have also won their fortunes. Their poor, unfertile, unsafe land that hugged the coast, which was unable to support the population a generation ago, now changes hands for millions.

The fallout from the initial prolonged construction boom continues. The papers are full of current legislation that will.. sorry, that may.. see illegal buildings pulled down.. offices and hotels and homes, many now owned by retired foreign residents. There are more, half-finished, buildings almost everywhere. At the same time, new buildings are still going up.

In Isla Canela, the new buildings are four-star hotels, a marina, luxury apartments, plush restaurants. This will be sold, and lived in, as a classy, wealthy place. But as I rode round it this morning, the monumental buldings lined utterly empty streets; wide pavements, all cleanly swept; regiments of lamp posts, all in a line; silence.

All I could think was, This must be what it's like to ride through Pyongyang.

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