The Bridges..........

Here are two bridges. The one on the right spans the mouth of the river Yaquinas, at Newport, Oregon. The other crosses the river ....... at .............. These bridges, along with most bridges that you encounter in the US, are absolute monsters. It's tough to see the scale, but there's probably only 3, maybe 4, bigger than them in the UK. The Severn Bridge, The Humber Bridge, The Queen Elizabeth Bridge (across the Thames) and the Forth Bridge. They all cross rivers that you've heard of and link populations counted in hundreds of thousands. Newport's population, for example, is less than 10,000.

Another odd characteristic of US bridges is that they, mostly, look like two bridges. I'm not sure how this happened. Perhaps the City Fathers sacked one engineer halfway through. Maybe, the architect thought his original plan was a bit dull and switched bridges midstream, so to speak. Or even, two engineers started a bridge from either side and met in the middle.

However, it happened, all these bridge are both highly impressive and extremely frightening to cross. The barriers to stop you going over the side might be two foot tall, if you're lucky. Whatever you do, don't touch them, you'll only feel the vibration caused by the trucks rumbling over them. And if you happen to hear the buzzing of a Speedboat's engine, don't bother glancing over the side to get a look at it. Sound doesn't travel that fast. It'll be long gone. These things are huge - I mean that - huge. Vertigo sufferers need not take fly-drive holidays in the US (Can Vertigo sufferers fly ?). Within a day you'll encounter a bridge that you won't be able to traverse and you'll finish up spending your holiday of a lifetime in an airport parking lot. The good news is the parking fees are quite reasonable. Whichever way one looks at these bridges, architecturally, engineeringly? or aesthetically, you will end up with a neckache.