A Roundabout Way of Doing Things.

A few years ago in the Northwest of England, and presumably in other parts of the country as well, mini-roundabouts started popping up all over the place. Wherever there was even the smallest of road junctions, suddenly it was “regulated” by a little roundabout. You would be driving along a quiet country road that you thought you knew well and then you would find your route interrupted by a series of these small roundabouts. I suppose it goes some way towards calming the traffic flow but mostly they are just a bit of a nuisance.

I comment on this bit of British road history because I fear it may be repeating itself here. We were out walking the other evening when we came upon this:-


Now, that is clearly a roundabout, a mini-roundabout, in the making. Or maybe they just want a place to plant some flowers – they do decorate their roundabouts very nicely here in Vigo – but I doubt it. At the moment the road is hardly busy enough to really merit a roundabout to regulate the traffic flow. A little further up the road, however, an old people’s residence is under construction. Are they perhaps expecting that to lead to a sudden increase in the number of cars on the road? Who knows? I intend to keep an eye on the situation. I shall also be on the lookout for a sudden outbreak of mini roundabouts ion other places.

Meanwhile, I recently mentioned the lack of a real gallego connection with the World Cup. Since then I have read about la langosta Paula, a rival to el pulpo Paul in the prediction business. She lives in an aquarium at O Grove and since predicting that Spain would defeat Holland in the final she has become their star attraction. I wonder if she has any predictions about the Tour de France where Alberto Contador is currently in second place, about 15 seconds behind Andy Schleck.

The other gallego connection is that three of the selección, Fernando Torres, Sergio Busquets y Andrés Iniesta made a promise to do the Camino de Santiago if Spain won the World Cup. Now that seems a bit of a backwards way to do things. Usually you’d expect to do the camino first and then get your reward but obviously not in this case. Others promised to do things like shave their heads or dye their hair in the Spanish colours but these three went for what is seen as the more mystical option.

Now we just need to see if they actually do it!