Bridges are great. You get from one bit of land to another bit of land by putting some land over water, or maybe over other land, there are multiple options. This thread is for #bridgechat.
I come from a town called Bridgend. Not a great place, but is literally named after a bridge that is still there. Not sure why it’s the end bit they focused on but it’s locally called “the Old Stone Bridge” and has an overpriced Italian restaurant on one side of it (might not be there any more, there’s no way of knowing). It’s from medieval times, so it’s been there for a while.
Sometimes I would throw stones off the Old Stone Bridge but mostly I would just walk over it to get to the other side. It has two car bridges within 100m either side of it, but those are ugly and utilitarian.
The Nijmegen Bridge is pretty badass too. If you’ve seen the film A Bridge Too Far, then you may be familiar with it. It was a key part of the Battle Of Nijmegen during World War II and there’s even a first-person-shooter that has a level on a digital version of it (Call Of Duty, I think).
It’s pretty long and covers a river that was actually diverted a while back for flood management. It has a boat café underneath that becomes this outdoor party venue during the summer months called De Kaaij which is a great place to go when the weather is good.
There’s an area under it on the south side which is like a peninsula which hasn’t got much to it, but has a nice park at the end. Because it’s a minor hassle to get to, it’s often quite quiet and has great views. It’s the park you can see with the trees in the picture above.
The City Cat runs underneath it which is a water-bus and comically is the 1 thing to do in Brisbane on TripAdvisor, but it really is. For a few dollars you get to go through the heart of the city with the best views on a catamaran.
They’ve done a lot of work to let people walk along the riverbank around there rather than it just being the edge of a road or someone’s private view. There’s even one walkway which is built on top of the river to make that happen. I like this. I like walking along the riverside.
My landlady is a bridge engineer but having seen how she redesigned my kitchen i am deathly afraid of any bridge she has been involved in.
Bridge most affiliated with me would probably be the Widnes-Runcorn Bridge, when you see it you’ve probably got the first stink from the chemical works at Widnes choking you and that lovely green somehow always looked quite depressing. I insisted a witch lived on top of it so found driving across a wild ride as a kid.
Quite impressive span too…
“At the time of its construction it had the third longest steel arch span in the world. It had the longest vehicular span in the country, but this record was held for only a few weeks until the Tamar Bridge was completed. By 2001 it was the 10th longest steel arch bridge, and at that time was just 8 inches (20 cm) short of having Europe’s largest span.[8]”
This is a good point, seems to be a fair number of “bridge unexpectedly collapses” stories in the last few years. Either that or I’m just noticing them more.
Does a sluice count as a bridge? I remember there was one in the village i grew up in and it used to be terrify me looking down at the swirling water below.
