Home Thoughts From abroad - 05 - The Road Most Traveled

A series of posts from the Togher Historical Assoc.'s Facebook group page - I'm From Togher , Boy.

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The Road Most Traveled

28th January 2014

Another favorite topic of mine is the subject of old roads. As a child I was fascinated by short cuts - the dirt worn tracks through fields and the like. I even experimented with a self made track through the grass verge on the corner of Vicars Road and Togher Road while I was attending Scoil Stiofain Naofa from 1979 to 1983. As you know , grass shoots if compressed over a long period of time will stop growing and reveal the topsoil underneath , in the process eventually creating a surface hardened by foot traffic. So I daily trod a path through the grass until soon enough a faint outline of a track became apparent. I was very easy to please in those days LOL! However , it leads nicely into how all roads are initially made. People , like water , will inevitably follow the path of least resistance from point A to point B. They will become aware of obstacles along the route and learn to avoid them in the future , such as trees or rocky formations. If the barrier to their destination happens to be a deep ditch or gorge or even a stream or river , they will look for ways around it or across it , building simple bridges for example. So the route if feasible and worthy of attention takes on an almost organic quality and is hard wired into peoples brains. As the years pass , the route is upgraded , the surface is improved to make it easier and more comfortable , bridges morph from timber into more permanent stone , people build dwellings along the route in the hope of attracting passing trade , etc. And so it goes. And so too it was with the Togher Road , for many years until relatively recently , the main arterial road through the heart of Togher. If you happened to be traveling this way over 400 years ago , the chances are you would be shocked by the arduous trek you would have to make. The road would be bumpy and uneven and enclosed on all side by heavy tree cover , in the Summer it would be dry and dusty , in the Winter it would be wet and mucky. As you left behind the now Togher Flyover, you would have to negotiate your way down into a gorge and splash your way across the stream , repeating the process again as you neared the now Togher Cross , this time for a second soaking. Of course the route was deemed important enough to construct over time two bridges. All around you would have been dense forest , so material for doing so would not have been in short supply. Notwithstanding the tracts of bogland that peppered the region , you would have cleared much of the woodlands for grazing and sowing crops. Flash forward a few Centuries and here we are! Of course we skipped a lot of things but there are no short cuts in Nature or Time. Only the ones we foolishly try in vain to make and which always backfire on us - such as altering our watercourses , building on bogland , denuding the land , concreting former wetlands etc. and we wonder then when it all goes horribly wrong. Nature won't mind you attempting to make a little dirt track across a field ; as soon as you stop using it , it will recover it. But if you act God - like and interfere with the natural order of things, it will allow some time to pass ; before it shows you who is really Boss!