The end of the line.

Yesterday was bright, warm and very windy so an early start found us at the station before the first coffee had begun to wreak its effect, the second coffee found us up north at the end of the line sat on a corner looking across at a strangely familiar ferry terminal. This port is nearest the smallest of the Baleares, only 67miles in fact, from where we spent a decade of whit weeks gradually expending more and more of the hard earned in order to get there and stay a week at that time of year.

The fact that this overseas sojourn is costing considerably less than our last week there cost, it was a seriously tempted me who asked how much to get to that little island. 110.00€, that’s 440€ to get us both there and back and that’s lots more than the flights. Oh well, nice thought and instigated because as we were taking coffee the terminal struck us as being rather more familiar than we had reason to expect in our first visit to a place. 

We watched the new ferry terminal hosting the same company rise from the dust of the old one in La Savina. The old brick and cement wash walls, painted so often that the white paint was probably thicker than the cement if not the bricks had small windows down the sides and doors at each end the interior being cool even when outside wasn’t. The toilets waiting for the passengers were hardly squats but not far removed ideologically. About eight or nine years ago it wasn’t there when we visited.

The following year its space had been occupied by a steel structure hugely out of proportion with its piers but a reflection of both how busy it had become and a warning about how busy it would become. 

The next year it had risen by another generous storey and was covered in slightly arched steel with a fake funnel, the upper storey taking on the appearance of a promenade deck behind a bridge. In profile it looked unexpected and effective. It became a viewpoint, meeting point, coffee stop and stopping point for the multiple examples of modern toiletry. 

Each year it became ever more in tune with its surroundings as the exposed and untreated steel weathered, the gravel road around it became tarmac and where once cars, scooters and an occasional medical evacuation helicopter had loitered it was now a huge array of chevrons to park coaches and taxis which came and went with increasing regularity.

On this pier today was a structure echoing its smaller cousin 70 miles away and whilst the details differed, steel had given way to concrete the tell tale signs of proportion, interior decor, space, elegance in a way and multiple examples of modern toiletry were satisfyingly similar.

The place it is situated in isn’t a bad place to visit either but I think that the costs may have brought home to me that this was not just at the end of a railway line.