Out of season what, really, is there to separate Barry in South Wales from Sitges in Catalonia.
The palm trees lining the Sitges sea front may give a slight clue, pointing in a fairly clear direction that there are indeed differences of a fairly basic nature between these two resorts!
Even at the best of times the fun fair in Barry looks like a fairly decrepit, faded set for some B movie horror pic. The decoration always seems forced, lacking the glitzy superficiality of other fairs that I have been to. The seedy penny arcades seem more of a cheap defining characteristic of the place than the frothy inconsequentiality they should represent. There is a hard edge to Barry which is raw and repulsive and it takes all of my childhood love of the place to mitigate the cold grasp of the modern version of a lost dream!
Sitges is slick and rich and confident. As Paul Squared said as we walked past closed shops, restaurants and bars, “I expect it’s buzzing at night.” There was a clear sense of expectation that ‘closed’ was momentary and that there was money for the taking! In Barry, out of season, ‘closed’ looks permanent; you half expect to see tumbleweed to drift along the sandy streets and to hear the irregular slap of a half open shutter to complete the soundtrack. But Sitges in the dead months seems to be resting to spring back at the tourists to siphon more and more money from the unsuspecting.
I am always surprised at how much care and attention beaches need. The little bay in Sitges that we usually use had shrunk. The sea had claimed the beach for itself and had cut a shelf of sand around the cliffs, which was all that was left of a once expansive stretch of sand. It was hard to imagine the pocket handkerchief sized beach being the same as the packed expanse of the summer. Presumably, just before the season starts, the bulldozers will get busy and the ‘natural’ expanse of beach will reappear and access to the other coves will be re-established. How sad that Nature needs to be given so many helping hands! There is more information about the real cost of the changing sand patterns at http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://geographyfieldwork.com/Sitges14_small.jpg&imgrefurl=http://geographyfieldwork.com/CoastalManagementSitges.htm&h=337&w=450&sz=13&hl=es&start=27&tbnid=6h_Al7HmFhmMdM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dout%2Bof%2Bseason%2Bsitges%26start%3D18%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Des%26sa%3DN in Sitges.
Our own beach (if only!) in Castelldefels is also showing signs of wear and the profile of the sands is changing. The early morning and late evening sound of the sand movers and the sand sifters no longer interrupts the thump of the waves and the crust of shells shows just how lively our waters are!
Our walking in Sitges exhausted us and we had a lazy evening in which the most active thing we did was curse the video club for issuing us with a duff DVD.
It was dark and raining (sic.) so there was no change of our taking it back last night. This means that I have the delight of wrenching my limited linguistic knowledge into ever more fantastic shapes as I try and get a rebate from the owner.
Keeps me fit!
The palm trees lining the Sitges sea front may give a slight clue, pointing in a fairly clear direction that there are indeed differences of a fairly basic nature between these two resorts!
Even at the best of times the fun fair in Barry looks like a fairly decrepit, faded set for some B movie horror pic. The decoration always seems forced, lacking the glitzy superficiality of other fairs that I have been to. The seedy penny arcades seem more of a cheap defining characteristic of the place than the frothy inconsequentiality they should represent. There is a hard edge to Barry which is raw and repulsive and it takes all of my childhood love of the place to mitigate the cold grasp of the modern version of a lost dream!
Sitges is slick and rich and confident. As Paul Squared said as we walked past closed shops, restaurants and bars, “I expect it’s buzzing at night.” There was a clear sense of expectation that ‘closed’ was momentary and that there was money for the taking! In Barry, out of season, ‘closed’ looks permanent; you half expect to see tumbleweed to drift along the sandy streets and to hear the irregular slap of a half open shutter to complete the soundtrack. But Sitges in the dead months seems to be resting to spring back at the tourists to siphon more and more money from the unsuspecting.
I am always surprised at how much care and attention beaches need. The little bay in Sitges that we usually use had shrunk. The sea had claimed the beach for itself and had cut a shelf of sand around the cliffs, which was all that was left of a once expansive stretch of sand. It was hard to imagine the pocket handkerchief sized beach being the same as the packed expanse of the summer. Presumably, just before the season starts, the bulldozers will get busy and the ‘natural’ expanse of beach will reappear and access to the other coves will be re-established. How sad that Nature needs to be given so many helping hands! There is more information about the real cost of the changing sand patterns at http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://geographyfieldwork.com/Sitges14_small.jpg&imgrefurl=http://geographyfieldwork.com/CoastalManagementSitges.htm&h=337&w=450&sz=13&hl=es&start=27&tbnid=6h_Al7HmFhmMdM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dout%2Bof%2Bseason%2Bsitges%26start%3D18%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Des%26sa%3DN in Sitges.
Our own beach (if only!) in Castelldefels is also showing signs of wear and the profile of the sands is changing. The early morning and late evening sound of the sand movers and the sand sifters no longer interrupts the thump of the waves and the crust of shells shows just how lively our waters are!
Our walking in Sitges exhausted us and we had a lazy evening in which the most active thing we did was curse the video club for issuing us with a duff DVD.
It was dark and raining (sic.) so there was no change of our taking it back last night. This means that I have the delight of wrenching my limited linguistic knowledge into ever more fantastic shapes as I try and get a rebate from the owner.
Keeps me fit!
No comments:
Post a Comment