In my post for July 6, I included a picture of the Chapel of Saint Margaret in Edinburgh Castle. She was also Queen Margaret and lived in the early 1000s. At that time, and until fairly recently, when people on one side of the Firth wanted to go to the other side they needed to either take a ferry or travel way out of their way up to where the Forth is narrow enough that there was a bridge. During Queen Margaret's time, many people on the south side of the Firth wanted to make pilgrimages to the shrine of Saint Andrew (the patron saint of Scotland) on the north side. The ferries charged money and weren't always safe. One of Queen Margaret's good works was to establish a ferry (safe and either free or cheap) for the pilgrims. Hence the names "Queenferry" for the towns on either side.
After all that establishing information, time for the first picture -- of the cute little town of South Queensferry, where my boat trip started:
Fast-forward almost 1000 years and technology had finally progressed to the point where it was possible to build a railroad bridge over the Firth at this point, shortening many journeys. It was an amazing feat of its time and is still in use today.
For any engineers reading this, it is a cantilever bridge. It was finished in 1890 and was the world's largest single cantilever span. It is still the world's second-largest single cantilever span; the very largest is in Quebec.
Cars and trucks were still out of luck for a long time and had to choose between a ferry or a long drive up-river. In 1964, a road bridge across the Firth was finally built. But cars and trucks are still a bit out of luck because that bridge isn't big enough for current traffic and it also has to be closed down altogether in stormy weather because it isn't safe in high winds. So they're in the process of building a bigger and better road bridge across the Firth. Again for the engineers: for the road bridges, they decided to go with suspension bridges. The new bridge is a different kind of suspension technique and I've forgotten the right term for it.
Now you're ready for some bridge pictures. The red bridge is the railway bridge. It's easy to tell the difference between the old and the new road bridge because the new one is still under construction and has gaps in it. Also, the old bridge has cables going straight up and down while the new one has cables fanning out from the towers to the road.
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We got a good view of all three bridges from the shore and then as we sailed away from them, and at the end of the tour we actually went underneath all three and back.
As we sailed along on the boat we saw some beautiful views of the shore like this one:
and a huge tanker ship:
and some sunbathers on a buoy:
I think we disturbed their nap!
Then we pulled up to Inchcolm Island, which is a bird sanctuary and also the home of a ruined 12th-century abbey. Passengers had the option of getting off there and catching the next tour boat back to Queensferry. I and several other people did that and we had 2 hours on that beautiful island. There were enough of us that I didn't feel isolated or nervous, but few enough that there was room for each of us to wander on our own and soak up the peace of the place.
The next three pictures are what we saw as we were circling the island before docking:
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I ate my picnic lunch while watching the large bird colony on the beach: lots of gulls, but also some other kinds of birds I couldn't identify, and I spotted a couple of puffins. I didn't get any good pictures of them but I enjoyed them. Then I strolled all around the island and explored the ruins of the abbey:
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As we left the island, we passed more sunbathing seals and one of them swam after us for few minutes, poking his head up out of the water from time to time to check us out. I couldn't capture that on film, but it was really adorable.
It was a delightful day -- a perfect mix of nature, technology and history!
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