Sitting on the shelf above my right shoulder as I type is a photo of the Firth of Forth from the road bridge to the rail bridge, taken from South Queensferry. Both bridges are visible but the opposite shore is shrouded in fog. It was taken in the days before I had stitch-assist or panorama settings on my camera - just a number of photos taped together. It is not a particularly outstanding shot, photographically speaking, but I keep it for the memory.
The Forth Bridge is a magnificent structure, well deserving of its new status. It was designed by Victorian engineers (both English, as it happens) who probably over-engineered it. It reminds me of the old joke about asking a mathematician, an accountant and an engineer the same question: "What is four plus four (4 + 4) ?". The mathematician answers, "8, of course" but the accountant simply asks cautiously, "What figure did you have in mind?" while the engineer replies, "I know the answer is 8 but I'm going to call it 12, just to be on the safe side". Joking aside, the result is a bridge that, as was said earlier, is still in use today, over 100 years later.
I think there was something on the TV, not so long ago, about its genesis, its construction and its upkeep. The reporter went up to the top of the structure - what a view!
A few years back, I took what I guess you would call a pleasure flight out of Edinburgh Airport. It was in a Douglas Dakota (a plane that goes back to the late 1930s and World War II). The flight was delayed for technical reasons (I seem to recall that a spare part had to be flown up from its base in Coventry) but it was well worth the wait, even though it was a fairly short flight. The Dakota took off, banked over the Firth of Forth, above both bridges, towards the North Sea, then turned over Leith and came back over the city centre. I happen to know the basic layout of the city reasonably well and also some of the principal buildings, so it was just great to see the place from above. If you should ever see something similar advertised, I would recommend grabbing the chance to view Edinburgh in a relatively slow-moving aircraft from a most unusual angle.
