Great Western Coffee Shop

Smoking, Vaping, Drinking, Sunning, Sweating, Sheltering, Socialising. Living in apartment blocks surround by randomly parked vehicles wherever they fit, busy roads with vehicles perhaps cruising to find spaces.  They may be nice inside, but the external aesthetics shout functionallity. Local culture - there may be some but the bar names and menus are in English.

Alghero is at the end of a narrow gauge railway that's not on my pass, but I visited for and extra £5 as it's one of the few remaining parts of the narrow network on Sardinia.  Even this has been cut back to the top of the town - you can see where the tracks used to go. 

Finding out the train times was a challenge.  The line starts in Sassari, where the station has three working platforms and a ticket office labelled "We do not sell tickets for Alghero".  The standard European departure sheets don't show these trains either.  The "Sardinian Green Train" website tells us about the weekly special excursions on some of the otherwise abandoned lines where they are still passable. The ARST website (they run the narrow gauge trains) proudly concentrated on their buses, but I *had* actually found a timetable.  Trains differ totally on Sundays from the rest of the week, but they are all in one table there than needs very careful reading.  When I reached Sassari, I bought my ticket at the station newsagent and tobacconist kiosk - where the gent checked my timings an reassured me I was correct in my reading, and I could make a round trip before the next main line train, some 4 and a half hours later.

A modern 2 carriage train, and it would seem that while I had some problems knowing when it ran, others did not.  Before we set off, it was full (almost) and some standing.  Made me feel old - VERY old - young people off for a day on the beach, well behaved and laughing and joking between themselves.   No-one got off at intermediate stations; more joined at Olmedo where we passed a train going the other way. 

The station at Alghero has clearly seen better / busier days.  Apart from the platform we arrived at, two others are rusted and there's other track work that hasn't seen a train, I suspect, this millenium. A crossover to allow run-rounds, and a turntable - redundant too now that the trains are current generation diesel units.  An hourly service is possible with the loop half way, and that's probably more than enough. And I note that trains can be coupled and run in pairs.

I bought myself a can of cold Sprite in the station cafe.  Two big fridges full of beer, blokes sat at tables drinking been, smoking, talking back and forth.  I eased my way through to the smaller fridge of soft drinks that was tucked behind. I really have no desire to dull my senses in the middle of the day which I know a beer would do in this heat.  The return train was much quieter - still a goodly number of passengers through to Sassari.  The countryside here is interesting.  Low but steep hills with patches of trees between tree grown, and rocky limestone (?) outcrops.  Some sections of the railway have been rebuilt to eliminate some twists and turns, but other sections are still torturous.

I'm glad I took a look at Alghero, but it's not on my list to return.  Seen enough. Sassari may warrant a return visit; I had an hour to look around but felt there was still more to see; had to rush back to the station.

Of the ones in between, "yesterday"'s train says "Zou!" so (given the OLE) that must be the Riviera line. I'm sure it's Antibes. The one before appears to belong to Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, but they have several minor lines in the mountains and loads of stations along them it might be.

Yes, Antibes. The one before is at La Bastide-St. Laurent-les-Bains while we waited to pass the train going the other way.

Antibes turned out to be a real gem - see my Facebook post (https://www.facebook.com/graham.ellis.melksham/posts/pfbid036NAKm816pgZfjaXGscJTMPGQdqRg8sN8vWJ7JBWkTJqcx2PKR1dGhipaXiGATVrfl)

Best of luck with this Heatwave..... :o