A week or so ago we had some visitors from Australia – on the itinerary was a trip to see our El Pazo vineyard on the other side of Barrantes (our local village).

The distance involved is probably less than 2km, which should, in theory, take a couple of minutes. Well, that’s the theory, but the problem is that Barrantes is traffic light hell!

Now, there are many traffic calming systems that could be employed to slow cars passing through the village, but unfortunately the method selected by our mayor is not only completely over-the-top, but is also just plain annoying. Several sets of traffic lights within the space of a few hundred metres.

As we waited at the first red light our vistors remarked that there was absolutely no traffic crossing the junction – we had been stopped just for the sake of stopping. To make matters worse there is no ‘green wave’ – the lights are not properly synchronised, so the likelihood is that you will be stopped more than once, to allow absolutely no traffic to pass. Of course, we were.

There is no real point to this story, except that it does give me the opportunity to use a rather nice photograph to illustrate my point – not that our mayor will take any notice.

As a footnote to this story, in the days since my original post, I have been taking a little more notice of the way that these lights work, or should I say the sequence. It would seem that the programme is designed specifically to stop you at least once during your journey through the village – on one occasion however, I was stopped three times in only 200 or 300 metres!