(narrow) roads of the world

During the year in New Zealand many differences between there and here faded from my notice as "there" became "home," at least temporarily. But I never stopped marveling at the difference in the open roads. Even the major roads in New Zealand can turn into narrow, winding mountain roads. And the road is liable to turn into a single lane anytime there's a bridge of any kind, even if the bridge in question is just a few feet long and crossing a stream. At least the NZ road authority is nice enough to put up signs warning you of every one-lane bridge, and telling you exactly who has the right of way when you and another car arrive at opposite ends at the same time.



And there is, as you can see, at least one bridge in the country that with a single lane caters to two-way automobile traffic as well as the occasional train. (Trains always have the right of way).

Then we left New Zealand, and found the roads progressively get narrower. From New Zealand's one-lane bridges, we went to Scotland's one-and-half lane roads.

One-lane road with passing places
Originally uploaded by kopretinka.

The Scots do provide plenty of passing places, or spots just long enough for a car and just wide enough for two cars. In some lengths of road, there are so many passing places one side of the road appears to trace a sine wave.

Nevertheless, Ireland tops them all. The Irish just pave a lane one car wide, put stone walls on each side with no shoulder or margin of any kind, and then just throw them open to traffic in both directions. There were places I was afraid I was going to scrape both sides of my car on the rows of stacked stone, and that was before I met someone coming the other direction. I got lucky in Ireland; unlike some New Zealand trips, on the Emerald Isle I never had to back down a road after meeting another vehicle in order to reach an area wide enough for the both of us.



The entire time I was driving the Conor Pass part of my brain was filled with curiosity about what, exactly, would happen if we met another car. Another part was dreading an encounter. Most of my brain, however, was occupied with trying to keep the car on the narrow road as we wound up the hills in a dense fog.
Ireland's highest mountain pass might not stack up with the high-altitude drives of the Rockies. But the Irish certainly put a decent degree of difficulty on the whole thing.