Soldier's Bridge

It was a desk day but I got pulled off course early by a few incoming calls and the task I was about to start first thing remains hardly touched.
I managed some fresh air with Bob and Caley early on and then had a tender visit to a possible job down in Fort William. Given that I blip Bob and Caley quite regularly I have gone with this shot from near the site visit.
This is the Soldier’s Bridge on the right. The military reference is related to the timber walkway attached above the pipe line at a later date by the engineers. It removed the temptation for short cut seekers to make illegal and dangerous use of the adjacent railway bridge or an even more dangerous pipe crest traverse of the river. The footbridge is well used and provides easy pedestrian commute from Caol to Inverlochy (where we lived before moving to Roy Bridge) and on to the town (Fort William).
The pipe bridge was built in the sixties to provide water to the then new Pulp and Paper Mill in Corpach. The water was abstracted from the Alcan tail race; the exhaust water from the hydro electric power house after the head energy had been removed. The tail race channel is about a hundred metres from the bridge and it itself blip worthy. Water from a 300 square mile catchment is returned to the River Lochy here a short distance from the sea. In fact the river level is influenced by the tide as this point.
The paper mill has closed, the buildings totally demolished and a saw mill has been built on the site.

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