Report - The Tees Transporter Bridge, Middlesbrough - February 2013

[jazzywheelz]

The Tees Transporter Bridge, Middlesbrough - February 2013

Visited with Kaplan

The Tees Transporter Bridge, often referred to as the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, is the furthest downstream bridge across the River Tees, England. It connects Middlesbrough, on the south bank, to Port Clarence, on the north bank. It is a transporter bridge, carrying a travelling 'car', or 'gondola', suspended from the bridge, across the river in 90 seconds. The gondola can carry 200 people, 9 cars, or 6 cars and one minibus. It carries the A178 Middlesbrough to Hartlepool road. Locally the bridge is often referred to simply as 'the Transporter'.

A little while ago, Kaplan mentioned to me that he really wanted to climb the Middlesbrough Transporter. Never one to pass up the opportunity of some high stuff, I said I'd be happy to accompany him.

Fast forward a few weeks and we're on the A19 heading north. To be honest we probably didn't choose the best night for it as both of us were feeling under the weather. Temperatures were hovering around zero and as we drove into 'Boro it started to snow. But heading towards the river we could see the beast all lit up in front of us. There was no way we were turning back now...

Okay so admittedly the shot above was taken after the floodlights had been turned off, but that was essentially the view that met us as we prepared our kit.

To be honest, even though the floodlights made the bridge look awesome from the ground, they really made it tricky to photograph once we were up there. Cue over/under-exposed shots and comical whitebalance...

Even though the sky was quite overcast, the views were still pretty sweet from up there. Plenty of industrial landscape porn and also interesting to see the Tuxedo Royale looking slightly more afloat these days...

Thankfully, after we had been up there a while all the spotlights turned off. This made it much easier to photograph, but by this time we were getting numb from the cold so we grabbed a few more shots and made our way back down...

After waiting out another short-lived flurry of snow, we did our best to get some shots from ground level before setting off on the long drive home...

Massive thanks to Kaplan for the invite and for being designated driver. I'm so glad we made the effort to get up there and get this old-boy ticked off the list. We might have to go for the hat-trick now :


Ta very much
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