An original solution to wear and tear

After a morning of routine domestic and office tasks, I took myself and my camera out to the port on my usual itinerary. Overnight there'd been a changeover of ships berthed, and the ferry to Melilla was busy being loaded with freight lorries bound for Morocco, or elsewhere in North Africa. I think it makes a couple of runs a week, but this is the first time I've seen it this year. 

Parked in the open area near the Pompidu Centre was a large mobile exhibition vehicle, branded with Google's name and colours, with a minimal hospitality suit and presentation area in front of it. A promotional road show is out and about visiting sites in different parts of the city, aimed at getting entrepreneurs to buy specialised Google digital services and training to use them. It didn't seem all that  busy, perhaps because it had only just arrived, or because few local people were out and about, but still enjoying a lunch break indoors, given the uncertain weather.

On my way back from a circuit of the old town, I used the route which passes through a pedestrian tunnel on the hillside above the road tunnel underneath the Alcabaza fortress at the base of the Gibralfaro mountain. Close to the entrance I noticed an open gate in the fence which forms the Old Town-side enclosure of this historic edifice. It opened on to a pathway around half of the base of the walls, driven through dense ground covering shrubs. What I found unusual was that the pathway was paved and lined on both sides with sheet iron, rather than a fence. From afar the path is an unusual rust-red gash through green shrubs covering the hillside. Once I started walking along it, I realised the ingenuity of the idea.

Visitors can walk along the hillside to the point where it overlooks the 1st century Roman theatre, and there are iron viewing platforms for those who want to take pictures of the Old Town from up at  rooftop level. With a potentially high volume of visitors, maintaining a path through such vigorous and thick shrubbery and enclosing it for safety's sake with low chain link fence would be costly to maintain. Vegetation would encroach on the path, and the pedestrian wear and tear would make a path, whether paved or unpaved, subject to erosion at the edges. 

Constructing a stylish iron trough as a hillside walkway provides safe access for abled and disabled visitors alike, and helps conserve the fortress grounds. Clever. I didn't notice this last summer, as the gate was always closed when I was passing this way, possibly something to do with the conversion of the theatre ruins into an open air auditorium for a summer season of world classic dramas, and not needing there to be a crowd of people overlooking the stage from a distance and watching for free. At least, that was my conclusion.