19 November 2001
Mystery of the bridge to nowhere
![[Artwork] Bridge crossing](/articles/images/011119Bridgel.jpg)
Some people call Peddars Way the nowhere road, because it is unclear where it comes from or where it is going to, and therefore the reason for its construction remains uncertain.
Norwich now has a nowhere bridge.
It is an extremely pretty bridge, and provides me with an alternative walk home. But I cannot believe that the city council went to all that expense just for me. Indeed, if we are to believe reports, the Novi Sad Friendship Bridge was built to provide a link between the city centre and Riverside.
Not a bad idea, if it was built in the right place. What it actually provides is a link between the bottom of Rouen Road (main architectural feature: a tower block) and the back wall of Boots’ warehouse-style superstore on Riverside (main architectural feature: well, nothing really).
So if you actually want to get from, say, a restaurant or cinema on Riverside to the city centre you have to venture out into the wilds of something that looks like an industrial estate, cross the river and then struggle all the way up to the top of Rouen Road before you hit even the prospect of a shop.
Intriguingly the new bridge is also supposed to help ease traffic congestion, presumably because you can get out your bike and cycle across it instead of taking your car. Unfortunately, super-stores tend to sell things that you can’t carry on a bike. Superstores are designed for car users, which is why it is odd to find them in such an inaccessible place as Riverside.
The only way you can get there by car is on the city’s inner link road, which the council promises to make even less usable by blocking alternative routes through the city centre. When the Big W monster opened, hordes of lemming-like drivers who couldn’t think of anything better to do on a delightfully sunny Sunday than go to a superstore totally blocked the traffic-light-strewn link road for hours from beyond County Hall to somewhere near Anglia Square. I wonder what plans the council has to deal with this. Build another cycle bridge, perhaps?
One final question. If the council really wants to discourage people from using cars, as it claims, why does it connive in the creation of such a car-friendly enormity in a strategic and potentially beautiful spot that could have provided a delightful pedestrian haven – not to mention a bus station? We should be told.
Knocking showers on the head
Fellow walker and diarist Robin Limmer – editor of the Merry Mawkin – shares my concern at showers that gang up and get organised. But he has noted that weather forecasters have gone further in their attempt to explain the vagaries of weather to us: they are telling us that these showers are now getting knocked on the head. Well, sometimes.
Reassuring, no doubt, but the similarity to Saturday nights on Prince of Wales Road, Norwich, is disturbing. There, too, showers of drunken youths gang up, occasionally get organised and are often knocked on the head.
Is meteorology imitating human behaviour?
One thing you can rely on: whatever happens in the way of weather can be put down to global warming. The mild October was a result of global warming; so was the stormy weather that followed, and the rainfall. No doubt a prolonged freeze next spring would have the same cause.
Everyone “knows” that rising sea levels are also caused by global warming, despite the fact that in some parts of the world sea levels are falling. And I suppose all those heavy goods vehicles and power stations in Roman Britain caused the influx of the sea over so much of what is now dry land.
So of course it’s worth spending millions of pounds on jolly environmental conferences in places like Morocco to make jolly pointless protocols which, even if everyone kept to them, would have no effect on climate whatsoever.
Climate will always change for various reasons. Sea levels will rise and fall. Using the money to feed the starving would make a great deal more sense. It would probably also have a much more profound effect on our future.
Website propaganda plan by warty newts
Readers familiar with the long-running campaign by great-crested newts to destroy Norfolk life as we know it will be as disturbed as I was to discover that there is a BBC website featuring the devious amphibians.
It reveals, however, that the newts – who are determined to expand across the county, preferably using dual newtways – are also called warty newts, which is much more appropriate somehow.
To show how fair-minded I am, I will reveal that the newt site can be viewed by mature adults at www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/your/extra/newts.shtml.
Anyone wishing to read about the fight against newt expansion waged by Norfolk veteran Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago can read his diaries exclusively on this site at http://back2sq1.co.uk/houseago/default.htm. You can’t say fairer than that.
Moving mountains
It was not until last week that I realised the Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team was set up to rescue mountains and not, as I had thought, to rescue people.
The idea, apparently, is to remove mountains piece by piece from places that have plenty, and place them carefully in Norfolk, where we need them desperately. Winterton and Caister have been suggested.
Meanwhile at Hopton the 60 steel steps carefully installed at a cost of £5000 by the parish council to make access to the beach safer have been deemed dangerous by the Health and Safety Executive because the treads are too narrow.
It’s a good job the mountains haven’t been fully transferred yet, or the HSE would have them taken back on the grounds that they are too high and steep. The words “waste” and “space” spring to mind.
Buses' extraordinary behaviour
The Autonomous Republic of Hingham, near Norfolk, is being hit again by mysterious fluctuations in space and time. I am told by an unimpeachable source close to the parish council that the bus stop moves for no good reason.
The official timetable claims it is outside the garage, but it has been seen near the church and at other unexpected spots. Residents wishing to travel into Norwich therefore have to gamble.
Hingham expert Professor V A R Scheinlich puts it down to “a new wormhole phenomenon upsetting the fabric of space-time”, but others blame the bus drivers. I personally find that hard to believe.
Reports reach me from elsewhere, however, suggesting that Hingham may not be alone in encountering bus troubles. Readers of the EDP Saturday magazine will know that my colleague Neil Haverson is encountering extraordinary bus behaviour.
In fact I could scarcely get beyond mentioning the word “bus” to any regular bus user without provoking a stream of extraordinary stories: Extra-dimensional buses that appear only fleetingly and then vanish; Whole series of buses that do not exist at all in the physical world; Buses that do not relate in any way to real time.
These phenomena pale into insignificance compared with the overwhelming impression that the entire bus network is a joke being played on people without cars.