19th June 2010 - Brick sets

I guess travelling largely in Europe you do tend to see fairly similar things when you are out and about, only a few degrees of separation to what you are used to seeing. So I guess that I should expect to see a few more unusual things having move to a new Continent.

Road surfaces are the focus of today's blog, mainly because I see a lot of different ones on my way to work and wanted to capture what I see.

Leave the Hotel apartments on a very smooth surface, not unlike a tarmac road but with no visible lumps of stone, as I say very smooth surface. I saw them laying patches of it before the rain came. All done by hand, no tools, so intrigued to see how they managed to do it so well. Down the hill onto the main road where you transition from 'tarmac' to brick sets, around 1 mile of them. Some areas have tarmac repairs, now I though the idea of brick sets was that you could simply lift and replace the affected set? Few sets of speed bumps, with a few of the bolt down humps removed so that the wheels of the car will fit between and you can maintain your speed. I read a story in the paper that when the traffic police install them people then 'vandalise' them by taking up sections to allow cars to be unaffected by them. This does lend itself to all vehicles approaching the speed bumps and all heading for the removed sections to avoid the bump which adds to the excitement! Off the brick sets onto concrete slabs, mile upon mile of them. Then there will be some road works so transfer onto the mud beneath the road surface, then new concrete, then tarmac, then brick sets, then rubbish as Vikas the driver has found a new short cut - drive across the central reservation filled with rubbish and onto the other side.

After the heavy rain earlier in June there have been some very large holes appearing in the road surface along with the missing manhole covers, most of which have yet to be replaced. One of these missing manhole covers had been covered over with a round 'No Waiting' road sign that had been ripped out of the ground! I guess it still served its purpose!