While I was in Dubai they built a road - its a very short road ( km) and it is right outside my window, so I noticed it straight away, and was impressed with this little beautifully built piece of tarmac, complete with stop lines and carriage way markings.
The sound of the drilling from my apartment
A few days later I heard drilling and looked out to see they were digging up the new road they had just built. First they cut it in half with a ditch so no one could drive down it any more. Then they cut another trench across the road leading to the new road ( so people could not get into the new road)
The roadworks lasted several days and each part was done by a different set of Contractors. One day an Electricity and Water Authority (EWA) was there in his car giving directions, then a team if men dressed in yellow PPE appeared with a small bob cat, cones ( there are always cones at roadworks just as sure as there are carrots when you are sick!) and noisy pneumatic drills digging up the corner of the new road. The little bob cat took all the tarmac they removed and dumped it on the waste ground opposite. Another day a lorry load of sand and cement arrived and the men mixed concrete and spend the day pushing it to the roadworks in a small wheel barrow, and filled the hole in.
As usual , roadworks in Bahrain cannot be done by one person , and at the peak there were 5 people working on the hole. No 2 working, 2 watching and a supervisor!( he is the one with the white helmet, or was that the EWA guy? So many people over so many days I got confused) .
The hidden rubble from the roadworks - beware, especially at night!
Once they finished with the sand and cement the bob cat operator moved it to cover the tarmac pile ( I guess a kind of disguise so they do not get fined for illegally depositing waste on Public land!)
I made a map in case the contractors forget where they buried the tarmac!
Many people ask how I spend the days waiting for Bapco security to issue my letter to get my new good behavior certificate. So now you know, watching roadworks!
My dad, reading the paper in the compost heap, as you do!
It does scare me how like my dad I am becoming in my old age- he used to sit watching the learner drivers go past our house ( we were unfortunately on the driving test route so would have 100 cars a day reversing outside our house). He would note how many times a day each car came past, record the registration plate and then write letters of complaint to anyone who would listen to him. Here I am some 22 years after his death taking photos and blogging about roadworks outside my house!
A learner driver in the UK like the ones that got my dad so mad!
Watching the men dig reminded me of the MTa Masterclass I attended in Bahrain with Jamie at the Diplomat Hotel in Bahrain in 2014. In one of the coffee breaks the other delegates ( all Bahraini's) and I were looking out of the window and watching all the contractors digging different holes in the different roads around the hotel. I asked why they were always digging up the roads in Bahrain and one of the Bahraini's said:
"It's because they lost the map , Neil"
When I asked what map they were referring to they laughed and replied:
" The map showing where the buried treasure is!"
I still did not get it and so they explained that in an island there was buried treasure and the pirates had a map and tried to find it. In Bahrain they had lost the map ( so they explained with serious faces) and so they just dug holes anywhere - trying to find the treasure.
For a few minutes I even believed them!
As my regular readers know I love telling stories and this little new road outside my house in Hidd reminded me of another short road I visited many year's ago in Scotland on the Isle of Skye. The road was called Calum's road and was so famous a book was written about it.
The book is in storage in Palawan but the Goodreads website explains the story:
"Calum MacLeod had lived on the northern point of Raasay since his birth in 1911. He tended the Rona lighthouse at the very tip of his little archipelago, until semi-automation in 1967 reduced his responsibilities. ‘So what he decided to do,’ says his last neighbour, Donald MacLeod, ‘was to build a road out of Arnish in his months off. With a road he hoped new generations of people would return to Arnish and all the north end of Raasay . . .’ And so, at the age of 56, Calum MacLeod, the last man left in northern Raasay, set about single-handedly constructing the ‘impossible’ road. It would become a romantic, quixotic venture, a kind of sculpture; an obsessive work of art so perfect in every gradient, culvert and supporting wall that its creation occupied almost twenty years of his life. In Calum’s Road, Roger Hutchinson recounts the extraordinary story of this remarkable man’s devotion to his visionary project."
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1083545.Calum_s_Road?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=JHkDh3jhuh&rank=2 ( accessed 6.3.22)
Somehow even with 9 men working on it I don's think the new road in Hidd will be as good as Calum's road. I cannot see it being "so perfect in every gradient, culvert and supporting wall". But then this is Bahrain not the Isle of Skye and this is 2022 not 1967!
I remember driving down this narrow potholed road back in 2009 and being scared I would meet another car coming the other way - and in the end having to make a 20 point turn ( like the learner driver's outside my dad's house!) and go back the way I had come as the road was too difficult to drive on!
If you want a good book to read about Scottish history / The Gaeltacht ( the Gaelic speaking part of Scotland) then I thoroughly recommend Roger Hutchinson's book. Likewise if you are on the Isle of Skye and its a clear day go and visit Calum's road. Probably best to park and walk rather than drive , just like the road in Bahrain!
If you want to find out more about the actual road then click on the link below:
https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/raasay/calumsroad/index.html
I have to go now to watch some road building! I hope you have enjoyed the blog and as usual we welcome your feedback! Special thanks to Jamie Thompson at MTa for supplying the Masterclass picture!
This is TBK signing out to go to a land line to call Ahmed at Bapco Security who just emailed me about my Good Behaviour Certificate! '
Kita Kits Palawan!
Hello, I am The British Kabayan! Feel free to read my stories.
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