many bridges to cross

Fellow bridge enthusiasts will recognise the genius of this Guardian article immediately - inviting photos and reminiscences of well-loved and notable bridges from the general public. There's an inevitable urge to do a bit of Whoa I've Been There bridge-bagging, so I may as well indulge myself:

• the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge is basically what made us too late to do the Bushmills distillery tour on our Northern Ireland trip in May 2008;
• the Clifton Suspension Bridge brings back happy memories of my many years in Bristol, during which I crossed it countless times by various means - on foot, on a bike, in a car and at least once as a pillion passenger on a motorbike carrying a full set of golf clubs, probably in flagrant breach of some law or other;
• the mighty Forth Rail Bridge - this view is from North Queensferry;
• I went across the Chirk Aqueduct in a canal boat (which we'd hired from Chirk Marina) on a canal-boating holiday in April 2000 - here's a picture featuring my friends Clare, Andy and Jon to prove it;
• we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (and back across the arguably more spectacular Manhattan Bridge) during our trip to New York for my 40th birthday in February 2010;
• I go across the second Severn Bridge pretty much every day, except when I choose to go across the old bridge instead, just for a laugh;
• the Newport Transporter Bridge as mentioned many times on this blog - the Middlesborough one also gets a mention;
• the Gates of Haast span a scary-looking gorge full of rapids in the South Island of New Zealand; needless to say when we stopped there in 2001 we decided to trek down to the rapids and take a look - here's Mario making himself useful and providing some scale.

All of these are terrific, obviously. I offer as an addition this photo of me on a rope bridge in the spectacular Abel Tasman National Park during the same trip to New Zealand in 2001, and a general view of the excitingly bouncy rope bridge over the Wye at the Biblins near Monmouth, which we trekked across and back on our camping trip last August.