Report - Menai Bridge, Anglesey, November 2013

[SAt]

Menai Bridge/ Pont Grog y Borth

Once the Zipline meet was organised and I realised how close to Menai we were going to be, I decided
to head down a night early and have a crack at the Bridge.

So, a few weeks later and I'm parked up nearby, I watched for a while to gauge the traffic, 2 police
cars and about 50 taxis later I decided it wasn't getting any quieter and Id just have to chance it..
Climbing the Bridge is pretty simple, you just have to pick your moment, hop the fence and start going up!

Once at the top of the huge chains and cables holding the bridge up, they look much more impressive than they did
from below and I ended up spending quite a while up there.

Bridge was sick, Zipline was sick. Good to meet everyone who came along to the weekend
Shouts to The Kwan for organising the weekend or I probably still wouldn't have taken these photos yet...

Before the bridge was completed in 1826, the island had no fixed connection to the mainland and all movements to and from Anglesey were by ferry, or on foot at low tide.
The main source of income on Anglesey was from the sale of cattle, and to move them to the markets of the inland counties or London, they had to be driven into the water and swum across the Menai Straits. The Act of Union 1800 increased the need for transport to Ireland, and with Holyhead as one of the principal terminals to Dublin it was decided to build a bridge.
Thomas Telford was assigned the task of improving the route from London to Holyhead, and one of the key improvements was his design of the suspension bridge over the Menai Strait between a point near Bangor on the mainland and the village of Porthaethwy (which is now also known as Menai Bridge) on Anglesey. The design of the bridge had to allow for Royal Navy sailing ships 100 feet (30 m) tall to pass under the deck at high tide, and no scaffolding was allowed during construction as that would have violated the rule.
Construction of the bridge began in 1819 with the towers on either side of the strait. These were constructed from Penmon limestone and were hollow with internal cross-walls. Then came the sixteen huge chain cables, each made of 935 iron bars that support the 176-metre (577 ft) span. To avoid rusting between manufacture and use, the iron was soaked in linseed oil and later painted. The suspending power of the chains was calculated at 2,016 tons and the total weight of each chain was 121 tons. The bridge was opened to much fanfare on 30 January 1826 and reduced the journey time from London to Holyhead from 36 to 27 hours, a saving of 9 hours.

Diolch i Chi

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