From Horse Track to Road

If the streets of old Boston are rumored to have been laid out by cows, then our roads here were laid out by oxen. Thanks to the hilliness of the area, a road here never goes in a straight line for more than a kilometer. The road which goes around the peninsula of the Barbanza in western Galicia hugs the coast. The coast is an accidental coast worse than a granola bar; you don't know what you're going to bite into next, just like you don't know where the sea will bite into land next. Therefore there are curves where you end up thinking you've just changed directions and are going back where you came from. That is most noticeable on a sunny day when, from having the sun at your back, it's suddenly blinding you.

At a crossing near Rianxo.

The tarmac road that goes from Padron to Ribeira was originally laid out in the middle of the nineteenth century. Though it took its own sweet time, like most civil constructions around here. They began in 1864 in Padron and ended over twenty years later in Ribeira. And it has changed very little since then. It has most of the same curves as over a hundred years ago. The only thing that has changed has been the width. Especially over the bridges. I remember bridges that were just one and a half cars wide, where one car would have to wait while the other passed. That was during my childhood, though, when there weren't the number of cars on the road there is now. If they had maintained those bridges the same, there would be massive traffic jams today. That first road was made of macadam, and I can imagine the dust created when the first car began to circulate. But it wasn't asphalted until the 1940's, after Franco came on a state visit to Ribeira. I suppose he choked on the dust.

Part of the abandoned Camiño Real.

Before the road, there was a lane. It was maintained by the state, so it had the name of Camiño Real (Royal Way) though it was more of a path than a road. There are still some sections that the 19th century road didn't pave over. Some of those sections are still used and are narrow, even though they've been widened since. They were lanes mostly for horse riders, not even carriages, and narrow carts, such as peddlars' carts. People did not tend to stray far from home. In 1826 the trip from Puebla del Deán to Padrón took 8 hours at a "military pace." That same trip now by the road built fifty years later takes close to a half hour, twenty minutes or less along the highway, further inland. 

We now have roads all over the place. In fact, if you get lost in the woods, just keep walking. After a few hours you'll come out onto a road or a lane. But back then movement was difficult. I suppose the occasional peddlar was like a department store knocking at your door. No wonder market days were important in small towns and large villages. It was one of the few moments that after a long journey, people could visit a town and do necessary shopping. It wasn't like today that if you need a new pair of shoes you get in your car, buy them, and come back home in under an hour. Isolation is no more.