Bridges over the River Forth

35 Gigs of photos later, the initial sort is now complete and hopefully I can complete the trip journal and get on with the photo album. We left Edinburg Castle and will continue onward toward Dublin, Ireland. More photos and less text may be the pattern for the duration of the trip! Hopefully by the time I complete this journey we will be announcing the next destination!

Our days always started early and shortly after breakfast we headed out of town with a destination of Stirling. The countryside was beautiful, even on the overcast day. We were so thankful that though the day was chilly and windy, it was not raining. The rains so far had been arriving during the night.

Countryside drive with the hills in the distance.

The Forth Railway Bridge....is named for the River Forth - the one on the north side of Edinburgh. This area is called the Firth of Forth, which is comparable to what we would call Tampa Bay. You will also see another bridge for cars. This is actually a pretty remarkable structure, built between 1883 and 1890, it was the worlds first major STEEL bridge, at 1.5 miles long. It was one of those great construction marvels like the Eiffel Tower. 

The link provides lots of technical information about the 'cantilever' style of the bridge, but I thought it was pretty interesting that the surface area needing continual painting equals 45 acres. That is a LOT of paint! The bridge evidently continually had painters on it for the first hundred years. Now they have developed a new paint that lasts 20 years, so we did not get to see any painters, since it was last painted in 2009.  Look for the train in this photo.

Now it is easier to see the train. Yea for a great ZOOM feature! The bridge still has up to 200 train movements daily! 

The span between the two bridges was far more than arms length. The smaller bridge on the left is the passenger bridge...for cars. 

The Two Bridges Hotel is across the street from the river and overlooks the bridge.

It is always fun to play with perspective!

The oldest Post Box in Scotland. These boxes are cast iron, painted red and they are embossed with a crest indicating their date of installation into service. This one has the crest belonging to QUEEN VICTORIA. Next trip over, I will have postcards ready for mailing!

Because we became clever enough to take the group photos BEFORE we gave everyone time to check out the locale, we managed to get the entire group. It was SO COLD on the shores of the river! Notice the passenger bridge on your left and the rail bridge on your right. Queen Victoria's Post Box is in the middle.

Back to the bus and a chance to warm up! 

We were continually amazed at how green it was in January. It was mush and wet. but it was green!

We saw lots of sheep, but found that this was the wrong season for the sheep-shearing. They spend the winter growing out their wool. Surely we should have known this...we are from Florida, after all!

Off to the Woolen Mills
and
a fresh post.
For some reason my next series of photos keeps going to the top of this page.
I do not want them in that location, thank you.

Build bridges, but don't burn them.
You never know when you might need to go back to where you started!