Life, An Update

On Tuesday (is it really Thursday already?) we ('we' being Anna - a friend who had been staying - and I) drove down from Eagleton to Bishopbriggs.  We came via Skye and the Western Highlands and it was a beautiful drive.  Until, that is, night closed in as we left Fort William.  For me it was a foretaste of something I've not experienced since 2005: driving with temperatures around zero and the threat of ice on the roads.  The car is getting shod with winter tyres tomorrow.

It's great being down here are catching up with folk, shopping, going to a concert and the theatre and so on.  In theory I should have just as much time for Blogland but I've hardly read a blog this week.  I also miss the Big Skies which you just don't get in towns and cities. This is the sunrise a few days before I left: 

As we left the little township of Tarbert on Harris to cross to Skye I left a little bit (quite a lot actually) of 'me' there.

Boarding the ferry MV Hebridean Isles

Tarbert is on an isthmus between North and South Harris 

The barren landscape of Harris made even more rich and brown in the low sun of winter. 

The splendid bridge between the mainland of Harris and the small island of Scalpay

A Walk To A Bridge

Yesterday Peter and Bill and I went for a walk.  A very interesting walk.  A most enjoyable walk.  We walked from Callander town centre (where the friends I'm staying with live) up to the Bracklinn Falls on the Keltie Burn and then back through the woods to the end of the town and back along the old railway track. 

The new Keltie Bridge opened in November 2010, the original bridge having been swept away by flash floods in 2004.   This 20 tonne  bridge  made of local Larch and four 12 metre long Douglas Fir trunks was brought to the site in sections, constructed on site and winched across by hand.

The view up the burn from the bridge

The Bridge from below the Bracklinn Falls

Setting off for home

A startled Roe Deer decides whether we are a threat (this was taken with the equivalent of a 660mm telephoto lens - we are not really close

Trains Have Priority

CJ just asked me what level crossings or train crossings were called in the USA. Trains in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are treated rather differently to trains in the UK and much of the mainland Europe that I have visited (as far as I can recall anyway). In the UK trains are generally fenced off from public access even across many many miles of Scottish moorland. The concept of a train sharing a public road bridge with cars and lorries without even a set of lights of a barrier is incomprehensible in the UK. However in South Island, New Zealand I recalled travelling across a bridge which also carried trains and there was nothing more than a 'Give Way' sign to indicate to motorists that oncoming vehicles, and presumably, trains have priority!

The approach indicates a railroad crossing (should it not be 'sharing') and that cars should give way.

 

I can see the cars that are coming.

 

Now what happens if a train appears?

Bridges

I read CJ's posting The Charm of Bridges with great interest because, like many people, I, too, love bridges. It's not just their practicality nor their history nor their necessity but their whole being. They are often the most beautiful of structures however humble.

A bridge over the canal near Llangollen

Although it is strictly speaking a viaduct rather than a bridge Le Viaduc du Millau is one of the 'Things I Want To See Before I Die'.

On Monday I passed through Confolons - a lovely old town which I have liked. since the first visit. and which is twinned with Pitlochry. It has a particularly interesting and old bridge which I photographed from the new bridge on which was flying a New Zealand flag (because of a Maori group in the local festival) and also from the end of the bridge.

However this is by no means the only bridge that I have fallen in love with. Several years ago I passed over the Pont du Normandie:

This posting could be a very long one but I think I've probably exhausted the photos (except for the Severn Bridge which I've already posted on) that I have with me on this computer so you are spared!