Five Bridges

Is anyone else all upside down and back to front at the moment? It's 1am and we've just had our tea (dinner if you're southern or American). My children have gone nocturnal. Matthew and I went out for our walk at 10pm, and when we got back after 11pm, I cleaned the kitchen and made a healthy and nutritious meal. What the hell is going on?!

I can tell you what's happened, as I suspected it might – walking is giving me energy. Pretty obvious, really, because that's what exercise does. I've been seriously lacking in energy for about three years now and I thought that was it for me, the start of getting old. This is awesome!

Right, so, we counted bridges this evening and we saw five within, ooh, erm, half a mile of each other? Something like that. Obviously, you'll be well aware of where we were when I took this photo. That's right, the ugly blue train bridge. You know it well by now. What I didn't tell you is that it's called Carlisle Bridge, probably because it goes to Carlisle. (Incidentally, the blue light in the distance is at the Ashton Memorial – I'll show you that in the daytime one day.)

The roads and everything seemed even quieter than usual tonight, perhaps because there was barely a breeze. This meant that we could hear the power coursing through the cables overhead on the rail bridge. Matthew wasn't keen and wanted to get back down to ground level quickly, but I felt particularly alive up there this evening.

I thought I heard a train too, because you can hear them through this gigantic pipe (I've never known what these pipes contain – there are two – and have never known who to ask. Does anyone know? Auntie Trish??). This is what the view looks like if you put your ear to the pipe to listen for the train – except it doesn't, because this is actually what the view would look like if my eyes were both located on my right cheek. But you get the idea.

Anyway, the train turned up after we'd gone back down, which I think means I have excellent hearing.

One bridge down (it's actually two, but I didn't point out the second one in the first photo). Aren't you just so excited about seeing four more bridges? I know you are, you strange and wonderful people.

This is not a bridge. This is one of the wonky warehouse buildings along the quay. This particular one is for sale, if you'd like it. I would. It used to be the home of Bay Radio. I was interviewed on air here once, when I was 16 and doing a sponsored tomato walk for Comic Relief (I had a tomato on a lead, like a dog, and took it for a walk). I'm not special though – I think everyone in Lancaster and Morecambe has been on Bay Radio at least once.

I showed you the maritime museum the other day, so I didn't photograph it again. But these are on the other side of the road from the museum – I guess they're something to do with tall ships and cargo loading. But what I thought was interesting was that, even though I've walked along this road probably hundreds of times, I've never noticed these before. This is normal though, no? Everyone walks around their home town with their eyes closed sometimes, I think.

This is a foot bridge, but I'm not sure if it used to be a rail bridge, because there did used to be a train station around here somewhere. I snapped this for myself, really, because it reminded me of the smell that used to stick to our clothes when we walked past here to school every morning – where those flats are at the other side of the bridge there used to be a place called Pye's Farm Foods, and I could smell it in my memory this evening. Like an oaty, outdoorsy, farmy, dusty, musty sweet smell – the smell of cattle feed, in fact. Gorgeous wafty smell. Clearly, the ideal spot for a cup of tea, so we stopped here, where there happened to be a convenient bench.

This cheeky one below is the Lune Millennium Bridge, sticking two fingers up at the world. And why not. Wikipedia says it's called the Swearing Bridge by many Lancastrians, but I've never heard it called that in my life. I seem to recall there being a bit of a hoo-ha about this bridge when it was first built because lots of people thought it was ugly. I think we know of an uglier blue one.

I like this bridge. When you're walking across it, it gives a false impression of flimsiness because your footsteps echo very loudly – some kind of magical architectural design involving physics and other clever stuff. I've seen people jumping up and down on it many times to see if it's really as flimsy as it sounds.

Fine. It's me – I'm the one jumping up and down. I do it every time.

Same bridge, different angle. I'm just showing it to you from this side because my grandad Stephen told me he built those railings that cover the length of the bridge on both sides. This is entirely plausible, since he was a welder. But my grandad is such an unassuming and quiet character that he said this to me in quite a throwaway manner and I've never actually been sure if he was telling me the truth or having me on. I should probably just ask him.

We had a bit of a chatty trek through town, past the bus station and the fire station, past Sainsbury's, which was being restocked (hurray!), past the next bridge that I didn't take a photo of at the point, and past the skate park, until we got to the last bridge.

This one is called Skerton Bridge and it's very old. I want to say that it's Victorian, but that's me just making stuff up again and I think it's actually much older.

Okay, I've Googled – it was built in 1787 – what does that make it? Georgian? It does. This is Skerton Bridge, and it's Georgian. The pavement and road surfaces clearly are not. Neither are the streetlights.

So this is the greatest disappointment of my little project so far. How amazing would this photo of the castle and the fourth bridge (called Greyhound Bridge, and I've no idea why) have been if my phone had been able to focus properly in the dark? Ah well. Let's imagine I left it out of focus on purpose, to look like a carefully thought out piece of impressionism.

So there you have them, five bridges all within an easy walk of each other. Quite honestly, though, it was almost 11pm and we were knackered by this point. But not knackered enough to cut across the park – there might be a lockdown in place, but that doesn't mean that murderers and zombies have relinquished their hold on the park, and we were too tired to think of outrunning any baddies this evening.

We trudged the half mile home, thinking it was a bit sad that we couldn't call in to beg a cup of water from anyone we knew along the way.

I wonder if we'll ever get used to this strangeness. I wonder if we'll be required to for a long time.

Until tomorrow, bridge spotters.

WQ