Bridges

Busy, busy, busy - a longer gap than usual between postings. So today a quirky one.

I do like a nice bridge. Today I went down to Pembroke Dock for the burial of parishioner Anne Bermingham. After the interment we went for a cup of coffee to a nearby hotel which overlooked the Cleddau Bridge. That's the high-level one that spans Milford Haven, joining the town of that name to Pembroke. It famously buckled or collapsed or something not long after it was originally built. Its high and gentle arc is elegant, if now a little stained. The first Severn Bridge, the Humber and both Forth Bridges, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the Rialto in Venice, the Golden Gate in San Francisco - there's something special about a good bridge. It joins together, it leaps into space, it unites the separated.
Bishop Edwin Regan of Wrexham has as the motto on his coat of arms "A fo ben bid bont" - "let him who would lead be a bridge". The ancient Roman title "Pontifex maximus" taken over by the Popes means "great bridge-builder".

A friend of mine in Canada, a great mixer of metaphors, when discussing a particular step on the way to the priesthood told me that he'd burn that bridge when he came to it. 

But what do we make of the experience of anyone approaching us at St Brigid's along Crystal Glen from Heathwood Road. For, along our street you cross two bridges on branches of the Roath Brook - without even knowing it! "I'll cross those bridges without knowing it"....hmmm.... what does that mean?

The pictures show two of my favourites - the Skye Bridge in Scotland, joining the Isle to the mainland in a way which only adds to the beauty of the landscape, which I have seen, and the Millau Viaduct in France, 800 feet above the Tarn valley - which I haven't... yet.