The cost of each trip by my new bike has now come down to about €35! It’s getting cheaper by the ride.
The new promenade has already changed the dynamic of the beach. Previously each entrance to the beach was paved down to the fringe of the sand and then a wooden walkway stretched into the beach for some way and petered out some distance from the waves.
When visitors come to the sea side they tend to concentrate around the area at the end of the wooden walkways with family sites becoming sparser the further from this ‘life line’ until the influence of the next entrance came into play. From the air they must look, during the height of the season, like a dribble of ink going into blotting paper!
People walked the beach at the water’s edge; that has now changed. The modified sand dunes immediately outside our little gate to the beach have been removed and the blocks for a new promenade have been laid. Although this new prom has not been completed and is ‘broken’ by the unfinished links to the street running parallel to the beach the local population has claimed this new paseo as its own and they are parading along as though it has been there for years!
Today, for some reason, has been an occasion for many more people than normal to be out and about and passing our flat.
The whole dynamic of the beach of Castelldefels is being changed; the promenade is opening up the whole of the seafront and linking parts of the town which were previously separated. There are, you have to understand, perfectly good roads along the whole of the front, but they do not encourage the promenading which is such a characteristic of the Spanish – this new walkway will and will also probably encourage people to expand their range of restaurants, cafes and bars.
It will for me when I finally remember to take the bike lock with me when I set out on one of my trips. By the time I get to one end of my route I feel I deserve some little refreshment!
The new promenade has already changed the dynamic of the beach. Previously each entrance to the beach was paved down to the fringe of the sand and then a wooden walkway stretched into the beach for some way and petered out some distance from the waves.
When visitors come to the sea side they tend to concentrate around the area at the end of the wooden walkways with family sites becoming sparser the further from this ‘life line’ until the influence of the next entrance came into play. From the air they must look, during the height of the season, like a dribble of ink going into blotting paper!
People walked the beach at the water’s edge; that has now changed. The modified sand dunes immediately outside our little gate to the beach have been removed and the blocks for a new promenade have been laid. Although this new prom has not been completed and is ‘broken’ by the unfinished links to the street running parallel to the beach the local population has claimed this new paseo as its own and they are parading along as though it has been there for years!
Today, for some reason, has been an occasion for many more people than normal to be out and about and passing our flat.
The whole dynamic of the beach of Castelldefels is being changed; the promenade is opening up the whole of the seafront and linking parts of the town which were previously separated. There are, you have to understand, perfectly good roads along the whole of the front, but they do not encourage the promenading which is such a characteristic of the Spanish – this new walkway will and will also probably encourage people to expand their range of restaurants, cafes and bars.
It will for me when I finally remember to take the bike lock with me when I set out on one of my trips. By the time I get to one end of my route I feel I deserve some little refreshment!
I have finished reading Starkey’s ‘Henry Virtuous Prince’, his account of the early life of Henry VIII and I must admit that I found it strangely insubstantial. I am probably committing a cardinal critical error when I say that its chatty, confiding style makes me yearn for something more academic. To be fair there are full footnotes at the end of the narrative and an exhaustive index as Starkey has deliberately excluded anything which interrupts the flow of his exposition.
I’m not sure that he presents us with anything which is radically new, but his descriptions have the unsettling immediacy of the prose of ¡Hola! magazine with the same intrusive explanation of the intimate life of the rich and famous.
Wolsey only makes his appearance at the end of this volume and whets the appetite for the next one! Perhaps that was the whole point!
Another glorious day today with the sun being particularly hot: I will soon see if I have become acclimatized to something warmer when I return to the UK at the end of the month!
I am hoping for an Indian summer!
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