Bah - Humber!

Before he retired to concentrate on his Bill Oddie impression, my dad was a bridge engineer though I suspect that in later years this meant dealing with the inordinate amount of paperwork it must take just to grease the gears of Local Government if you want to construct anything higher than a raised flower bed. Despite this he did work on bridges a few notches up from the beam bridges that carry cows from one side of a Motorway to the other, including several across the River Severn. I'm not sure he worked on anything as big as this monster but I still get quite a tingle going over them. However, this has not passed on to my children who both gotan> rather scared just walking out to the first tower of the Humber Bridge at the Weekend so bang went my mile-long walk into Lincolnshire. The photo above is from as far as I got while the rest of the family tiptoed gingerly back into Yorkshire.

Some years ago before being toddler-or-spouse-bound, on one Bank Holiday I went to the supermarket to get some rice to go with my bachelor curry and decided to keep on driving - with the next stop (next change down in gear actually) being at the Humber Bridge Toll. After a short jaunt down to see the big skies of the coast south of the river, I came back to the Humber Bridge Park (surely an overestimate of the number of vistors there I think) and walked across the bridge taking loads of Black-and-White photos, bracketing them so I had three exposures of every one. I got through three rolls of film I think and they came out quite nicely. This one is from Saturday and of course was in colour to start with. None of them show exactly how big the structure actually is. Looking up from the base of the first tower is so strange - the slight movement of the clouds above it suggests that the tower is falling. The length of the deck is just outside understanding - it is difficult to place the road that it carries into the normal context of the countryside that leads to it from each side - you just drive off one bit of standard, green, British landscape and end up in another bit a few minutes later. It is like flying. I used to ride out to cross the Severn Bridge (which actually seems quite homely in comparision to it's northern sister) and cycling across the side walkway is the nearest you can get to having a jet pack. I'm afraid that some of my children's fears has rubbed off on me and I'm not sure I'd be able to do that again without some shakiness.

I've just realised that th bridge would have been ideal for some stereoscopic experiments - maybe next time hey?