Apart from shopping cooking and house-keeeping I seemed to have spent all my spare time Monday and today writing and editing documents for CBS as it faces a political challenge from opportunists who think they have better ideas about running a long term sustainable communications system, but have little experience at doing so. Defending the enterprise has to be done, but it is such a waste of time. It's typical of what happens today when everyone does what is right in their own eyes, and believes in their own untried expertise.
Today's world is being swamped by so called 'disruptive ideas and technologies promoted as game changers. These come and go, proving themselves by virtue of their usability and robustness, but competitiveness and the contention that often surrounds innovation can drain creative energy and effort, just as when the world faces colossal unsolved problems requiring maximum collaboration. Pollution, climate change, food water, shelter and employment for more than seven billion people can only be coped with successfully by collective action, pooling resources and ideas for common solutions.
Anyway, this afternoon a made an effort to get out to go and visit somewhere I'd not been before. I drove north 40km along the coast road beyond Palomares and Villaricos across the border to Murcia Province, and the ancient fishing port town of Águilas, which was trading its salted fish around the Mediterranean in Roman times. Now, it's mainly a holiday resort, with its coastal plain given over to horticulture, in a neat colourful patchwork of well managed fields. The coastal road network is of high quality, as it needs to be, to take huge amounts of vegetables for local consumption or export shipping at container ports, notably Almeria.
On the A7107 coast road from Vera Playa to Águilas through sierra foothills, are remnants of the area's industrial past. Villages along the route preserve the tall brick chimneys of ore smelters, as a monument to another age. The rounded hills are devoid of trees, covered with bushes, few palms, as surfaces drain rapidly. The scars of two centuries of industrial exploitation of the environment seem to have been repaired or healed quite well.
In the 18th and 19th centuries Águilas port was one of Spain's busiest with exportation of minerals and esparto. Its development with other places in the north of Almeria Province, was encouraged by British entrepreneurs. The town is five times the population of Mojácar, with many fine beaches either side of it, on what's called the Costa Calida. The town itself is mainly modern and built up with narrow streets and slow traffic controlled by sets of lights at every junction and pedestrian crossing. The air must get very polluted in the holiday season when the population expands many times over.
There was probably far more of interest about the town than my first impressions gave me. I didn't stop long, driving just as far as the port. It's dominated by a high rocky promontory on which stands an 18th coastal watch tower in a fortified enclosure, the Castillo de San Juan de las Águilas. An earlier 16th century watch tower was destroyed by Berber pirates active along the coast at that time, and the enclosure seems to have been added when it was re-built. I took a few photos there, then mindful of the approach of darkness, headed back into the setting sun, using the by-pass road to escape the reverse journey through town.
I should have made an effort to get out earlier in the day. Time just seems to slip away from me.
Anyway, this afternoon a made an effort to get out to go and visit somewhere I'd not been before. I drove north 40km along the coast road beyond Palomares and Villaricos across the border to Murcia Province, and the ancient fishing port town of Águilas, which was trading its salted fish around the Mediterranean in Roman times. Now, it's mainly a holiday resort, with its coastal plain given over to horticulture, in a neat colourful patchwork of well managed fields. The coastal road network is of high quality, as it needs to be, to take huge amounts of vegetables for local consumption or export shipping at container ports, notably Almeria.
On the A7107 coast road from Vera Playa to Águilas through sierra foothills, are remnants of the area's industrial past. Villages along the route preserve the tall brick chimneys of ore smelters, as a monument to another age. The rounded hills are devoid of trees, covered with bushes, few palms, as surfaces drain rapidly. The scars of two centuries of industrial exploitation of the environment seem to have been repaired or healed quite well.
There was probably far more of interest about the town than my first impressions gave me. I didn't stop long, driving just as far as the port. It's dominated by a high rocky promontory on which stands an 18th coastal watch tower in a fortified enclosure, the Castillo de San Juan de las Águilas. An earlier 16th century watch tower was destroyed by Berber pirates active along the coast at that time, and the enclosure seems to have been added when it was re-built. I took a few photos there, then mindful of the approach of darkness, headed back into the setting sun, using the by-pass road to escape the reverse journey through town.
I should have made an effort to get out earlier in the day. Time just seems to slip away from me.
No comments:
Post a Comment