Narrow-Minded Roads

and other tales from a small village in Portugal

Living in, or driving through, a small village in Portugal often means navigating quite narrow roads – roads that haven’t changed since they were originally designed for tractors.

Like my little travessa, for example – a sliver of a farmhouse road down which the villagers rode or walked to get bread at the old mill at the end. Now in ruins, the family has been trying to sell the mill for years, but the road is too narrow for construction vehicles to access it for renovations. And so it continues to fall apart, merging into the landscape a little more each year.

The only vehicles these days along my 88” wide alley are tractors and a few of my intrepid contractors. Even my postman and deliverymen prefer to park on the main road, which is narrow enough, and walk down to my gate with mail and packages.

And although I’ve navigated it more than a couple hundred times now, I still hold my breath while driving down the travessa as the walls close in upon me and the car’s camera sensors scream, furiously flashing red on both sides.

Once I reach my gardens, there’s the added challenge of backing my car in through the gates.

Here’s what that looks like – the farmhouses across the field in the foreground and my courtyard and millhouse in the sideview mirror.

Portuguese roads – narrow-minded yet still charming in their own way.

© original art by Kristin Fellows

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