Ireland's Most Interesting Bridges

The Roscor Bridge near Belleek, County Fermanagh.

It's like three bridges in one.

Streetview links:

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

And looking back at it from the other direction.

MYOB wrote: »

I take it it was blown up and 'repaired'?

I'm not sure to be honest, but I presume it's something like that!

Here's the only photograph I could find of it:

Since I've been off partying like the unemployed bum I am for the weekend I'll have to content myself with not being able to comment on all the fantastic bridges posted over the last couple of pages ... bar one ...

Seriously, the Westlink is an absolute disgrace. It is without doubt the absolute single worst bridge in the nation. When you're building a big infrastructure project you obviously have to consider the costs of what you're doing, I don't begrudge the use of simple bridges for flyovers and the like where all you want is just to have a crossing. There are some points you reach however where you have to sit back and ask yourself, should we do something special here? These are places that will come to be the defining points on that infrastructure. As an example I refer you to the Luas bridge in Dundrum I talked about earlier and the lovely Catherines Falls bridge. These are both bridges that could have been done on the cheap and simple but instead something more adventurous was undertaken.

What we choose to do when we reach these points makes a huge statement about who we are, not just to others but to ourselves because we get the infrastructure we choose to build. The Westlink taken by itself isn't a bad bridge per say, engineering-wise there's nothing wrong with it but the Westlink taken as the iconic and defining point on the M50 (which it is) is woeful. It's unadventurous, bland and niether good looking nor ugly, it's just there. Worse, we paid an astronomical cost for it which means we all hate it with a passion, if it were a bridge we could look on with pride and say to our visitors "see our vision of modern Ireland" might we not mind the price? What the Westlink says about us as a people is that we have no pride in our land or what we build there, it says that we are fools, it says that something is rotten at the heart of Ireland.

Judgement Day wrote: »

Excuse me if I pass on admiring hideous mass concrete structures - the Westlink bridge has absolutely nothing going for architecturally whatever about its usefulness.

JD However interesting to see though how it compares with other pieces of fantastic bridge engineering witnessed already on this thread, yet this couple of hundred (I don't know the exact span doubtless someone will come in), metres of slabbed concrete and steel without so much as the challenge of the need for a suspension bridge across a ditch and a stream cost the ordinary folk of ireland so much pain anguish and to this day money.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill

"Never in the field of political corruption was so much paid by so many to so few"

The most expensive piece of concrete in the entire country - but lets not spoil this thread by dwelling on the corrupt nature of the statelet.

DWCommuter wrote: »

Here's a really mad one over the Grand Canal in the midlands somewhere. Probably gone though.

GrandC16.jpg

I think this still exists, it's on the Grand, near Rhode http://goo.gl/maps/undZ

http://www.pbase.com/alangrant/image/115392085
the aqueduct where the royal canal crosses the Inny at Abbbeyshrule in Longford


In Cork city, you have the shakey bridge which does have a nice bounce to it.
and the sets of bridges
the big fella and the Long fellow

But more of interest, the two older lifting bridges
Brian Boru and Clontarf

and lastly the bridge with traffic going the wrong way.