please empty your brain below
Can we really count it as "Victorian engineering"? It was designed, and construction started, in 1829, during the reign of George IV.

(Admittedly not finished until 1864, but that was long after the engineer himself was dead)

| 05.04.13 - 8:45 a.m. | #

I agree that it's a great bridge DG not far from a lovely city.

Cornishmonkey | 05.04.13 - 11:01 a.m. | #

Vehicles pause at the barrier because that's where you pay the toll. By coincidence I was talking to the Information Centre manager on Tuesday, regarding my son doing his work experience week there. They've just got an HLF grant so it will get to be more of an attraction.

It doesn't exactly go nowhere but you do think twice about paying the toll. Pick the wrong time of day and you'll find lengthy queues of cars to cross the bridge. At the Nightglows during the Balloon Fiesta they even close the bridge to pedestrians and cyclists as well as cars due to the sheer weight of people making it unsafe.

It does move quite a bit during strong winds, which you may have felt on Tuesday.

allotmentqueen | Homepage | 05.04.13 - 11:02 a.m. | #

Hey DG - hope Bristol was kind to you on your visit, we do have a lovely city!

As Allotmentqueen says above it is sometimes closed because of weight of numbers. About 15 years ago I was walking back from Ashton Court Festival (a sadly now defunct music and arts free festival held in the Ashton Court estate, just over the bridge), and it was shoulder to shoulder with pedestrians as twenty-thousand-odd people walked back to central Bristol when the festival closed at 11pm-ish. Unconciously we fell into walking in time with each other and the bridge began to wobble and vibrate in time to everyones footsteps, it was probably only inches but it felt like miles... It was after that night that they started closing the bridge at festival times!

Oh, and did you notice the goats clinging to the side of the Gorge, and the cave on the Leigh Woods side which is an occassional home to various travelling folk: http://dru-withoutamap.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/burwalls-cave.html

As ever, love the blog, still one of the only ones I read every day (and, thankfully, one of the only ones that doesn't seem to always be angling for a book deal!)

Ben | Homepage | 05.04.13 - 12:55 p.m. | #

Bristol is a lovely city. There is a nice footpath on the west side of the river Avon which you can follow from under the bridge all the way to Pill (and then there are buses back to Bristol). A nice walk if you return!

Jon Combe | 05.04.13 - 1:24 p.m. | #

The last time I was visiting the bridge my friends who live in the area were telling me that sometimes people jump from the bridge with a parachute strapped to their back, it does not happen very often they went on to say, when seconds later a man a few feet in front of us donned a parachute that he had hidden within his holdall and jumped after passing the holdall to a friend, by the time he landed on the riverbank a police car had arrived on the scene, then began a game of cat and mouse as they chased him along the edge of the river, he was caught within a few minutes and stuffed into the back of a police van.

Fishislandskin | 06.04.13 - 10:43 p.m. | #

Just noticed from your photos that they appear to have raised the height of the handrails with some sort of anti jump measure since I was last there in about 1986.

Fishislandskin | 06.04.13 - 10:54 p.m. | #

You came to my home town! Excellent write-up DG.

Gail | 08.04.13 - 12:12 p.m. | #

Just found your post about Bristol saying 'The road leads to nowhere', talking about Portishead. You should come here sometime, its really nice! Although in Wraxall, for some great walks, visit Tyntesfield. Hope you come and discover our towns beauty soon!

Tubeular guy | 03.01.16 - 3:11 p.m. | #











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