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 en...