Caminho Real nr 23 – From Funchal to… Funchal

We have gotten used to have roads. To go and have lunch in Santana, or Porto Moniz, to quickly get to airport… It is easy to forget that just fifty years ago getting out of Funchal was almost an adventure.

And until the opening of the Caminhos Reais (Royal Routes), in the second half of the 20^th century, it was actually quite dangerous. A description of the “route” between Seixal and São Vicente spoke of planks tied with willows that would very frequently collapse, always dragging someone along.

The Caminho Real nr 23 is the most iconic and certainly the most important. It would go around the whole island, a route that anticipated what would one day become the EN 101, and later the ER 101. It’s characteristics were necessarily different – it was, after all, a “road” designed to be used by people walking or, at best, by sleds pulled by oxen.

But it was a giant’s leap in the sense of allowing access and the possibility of traveling within the island with a minimum of safety – if not quite comfort. In fact, the accompanying graphic is quite clear about the efforts needed to overcome distances along the route…

The first stretches of the Caminho were still built in the 19^th century, linling Funchal to Santa Cruz, to Machico and Porto da Cruz and later to Santana. When this first ring road was finished, it had varied characteristics, to a great extend depending on the expected use of the route.

It was also possible to identify different priorities and strategies in terms od accessibilities. One could see, for instance, a greater stress on connections to the small harbor that dotted the coast, with the Caminho linking these to the hinterland. And if there is one place where this is obvious it is in the connections between the São Jorge pier and the villages of São Jorge and Santana. In the care and the effort that are still today clear both in the quality of the building work and the width of the route, this being the main channel out for the villages’ products to its market, with the produce being transported by boat to Funchal.

Common characteristics? The use of materials that existed in ample quantity, namely stone, in some places laminated basalt, placed vertically to give both added resistance to erosion and better grip, in other places pebbles, as is the case in Calheta. And the care in the construction, with a quality that allowed its survival, with only occasional maintenance, until today, the only exceptions being the places where it was destroyed due to the building of new roads.

More information at www.caminhoreal.pt

PARTILHAR:

Facebook

Google

Twitter

Linkedin

Print

Email