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Postcard from the Algarve July 07
There are a lot of motorcyclists in Sao Bras. A few of them are your genuine leather jacketed, pony tailed Marlon Brando clones, but the majority are more sober citizens. There are the elderly workmen on their 30 year old machines wearing crash helmets at least three sizes too small for them. (Not that it matters, as the helmets are worn with the chin straps undone - either a fashion statement or an acknowledgement that an undersized helmet would cause a nasty constriction of the skull in an accident).
Then there are the mothers who use motorbikes to take their children to school, one on the passenger seat and, often, one on the petrol tank. Mother and children always have smart, well fitting, crash helmets. And in our local supermarket car park, there is often a 12-year-old boy who whizzes around at 20mph on one of those foot high miniature bikes. He, naturally, has a crash helmet.
Mothers and children and transport bring me on to another of my whinges. First of all, you should know that Portuguese Zebra crossings have no restrictions on parking in the approaches. The local primary school has a pedestrian crossing outside the main gate. (Let us ignore the fact that the other end of the crossing stops at an unused green field that no one walks to…one day, there may be houses). So, mums delivering children in the morning and picking them up in the evening park on, or as close as they can get to, the crossing.
In this very religious country, it may be that the crossing is seen as a blessed area in which no harm can come to those who use it.
Certainly crossings in town are accorded great respect, with cars stopping for the old, the infirm and, always, for the gaggles of bare-midriffed young ladies who saunter, rather than walk, across.
And we must not forget the cyclists. Cycling is a national sport as popular and respected as football, but you rarely see cyclists in town. In between towns, at any hour of the day, on any day of the week, you may come across thirty or forty Lycra clad athletes, head down and pedalling hard uphill. They can’t all be night workers.
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