They’re going round for a pot of coffee (From York Press)
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They’re going round for a pot of coffee
11:30am Saturday 20th October 2012 in Letters By Reader's letter
The famous coffee pot roundabout in the United Arab Emirates, a symbol of hospitality
CONGRATULATIONS to Holgate Windmill on its popularity with the UK Roundabout Appreciation society (The Press, October 17).
About four years ago, I lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates in a large but hardly- heard-of town named Al Ain, near the border with Oman.
Al Ain is famous for the warm water springs that bubble up and irrigate the date plantations and make an arid desert look green. It is also renowned for the impressive array of roundabouts designed by British engineers when they laid out the road system for this growing city.
Having plenty of money, the local municipality designed and built an impressive array of art/architecture to make every roundabout different. These huge sculptures range from shimmering waterfalls and fountains, through images of the ruler of The Emirates, to flowered gardens and mock mountain scenes.
Perhaps the most famous is the coffee pot roundabout with an exquisite giant Arabic coffee pot tipping into a teacup (actually, they are used to serve cardamon tea rather than coffee), this being the recognised symbol of hospitality throughout the Middle East.
But they never had a windmill on any roundabout I saw. Some of these roundabouts are being demolished to make traffic-light controlled road junctions. How sad.
Bob Redwood, Main Street, Askham Bryan, York.
