The new road

This photograph shows the last piece of road (autovia), being dropped into place that will link the southern coast of Spain dirctly to Madrid and the north. The section is about 20 miles and runs a few miles south of Granada to Motril on the coast. The road opened a few weeks ago and the next phase is to link the entire coast via autovias.

I made the 20 mile journey down to the coast on the new road, but for my return journey I came back on the old road and drove past deserted gas stations and empty cafes. The new road has killed stone dead the business's that flourished up until a few weeks ago.

When I made my little film, Cafe, I asked an owner of one of these cafes how many cups of coffee he made a day. He said 600 cups every weekday morning. When I called back a few days ago there were just 4 other customers drinking coffee.

However, the old road replaced an even older road sometime during the 1950's. This original road was used by traders and seasonal workers to get to the coast where sugar cane was cut, plus herders used the road to move livestock. An elderly neighbour in our village told us once that she went on the 'old' old road with her father when she was a little girl - they went on his mule and the return trip took one week!

To conclude this post I did the same journey on the original old road (the old, old, road). To see how that was affected by the new road in the 1950's. To be honest I didn't complete the entire journey because as beautiful as the scenery was, the road was twisty and unpleasant to drive on resulting in my feeling rather sick!

5 miles down the old, old road and I found this abandoned hotel, home to dozens of cats.

A little further on is this abandoned arab style fort. I couldn't give this photo any scale but this is a big building, the door is a lot wider than my car.