A quiet, hazy Saturday morning...

...with no need to slog around the shops, but not wanting to sit at home all day, we decided that a quiet stroll along the Paseo filled the bill. Quiet being the key word; we hardly saw a soul apart from a young woman in running gear loping along accompanied by a panting, tubby Shitsu and an older couple sitting in the sun. She was on a mobility scooter and we noticed it was sporting a numberplate on the back, a similar size to those on motorbikes. We surmised that she had brought it from some other European country where stricter regulations are enforced.

Here there seems to be no National norm, each town's police force has its own ideas. An acquaintance, struck down by polio as a child and left with one child size leg as the rest of him grew normally, drove out from the UK with a specially adapted car that allowed him to be as mobile as he needed to be in his new home. Some years later, through no fault of his own, he was involved in an accident and his specially adapted car was a write off. His Spanish insurance company was only prepared to cough up the value of a normal car of its age, and this did not cover the cost of adaptation let alone replacing the car. His solution was to buy a sturdy mobility scooter with a large battery that promised a good mileage. He lived in a residential complex a couple kilometres outside town, and he would trundle down the hill to do his shopping, go to church and even go out at night for meals. As he grew more confident he even went as far as Moraira, holding up the traffic as he followed the winding coast road. All went well until he decided to change his living arrangements. He was finding it increasingly difficult to manage at home on his own, but he could not afford to pay the cost of residential care where he was. Someone at his church told him that she had a friend in Altea who took in elderly PGs and was a much cheaper alternative to a large residential home. The upshot was that he made the move and was very happy in his new home, but the new local bobbies were not very happy with him. As he began to explore his new environment, he found his scooter was too wide for many of the very narrow footpaths in his new town, and often he had to take to the road. He was informed, very politely, that if he was using his scooter on the road in their town, that he needed insurance, lights front and rear and he would have to apply for a numberplate at the Town Hall, then pay road tax and get his vehicle MOTed...

It seems that the UK is considering new rules for "invalid carriages" as well.