Saturday 4 July 2009

All Looks Well,

as this narrow boat makes it's way along the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, near Wrexham in North Wales,
but it really is 127 foot in the air, another case of me feeling a bit queasy! looking at the picture above on one side there is a path that you can walk along, originally built for horses to tow the barges, on the other side, nothing, just look over the side of the boat and it is a sheer drop,
Robert Hardman takes in the 1,700ft span of the aqueduct which has just been made a World Heritage site, Sir Walter Scott described this ‘stream in the sky’ as ‘the most impressive work of art I have ever seen’ but all is not well, enter the health and safety brigade, over the past 200 years, the aqueduct has had an immaculate safety record with no reported incidents, save for a couple of suicides and an injured abseiler who misjudged the length of his rope, not good enough, says the health and safety lobby, there are now demands to erect brand new railings along the open side of Telford’s triumph — all 1,007ft of it — in case someone is stupid enough to fall off, well I suppose we must protect the stupid from them selves, but what a shame it can not be left as it was built by Telford and Jessop in 1805, I guess people were not so stupid then!

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