How's it doing?

The much-awaited repair to Brougham Bridge has been blipped before, but we wanted to see how things were going. So, we went to the Castle (now we can with our passes!) and looked over the river. They are obviously rebuilding the arch that collapsed, but we could see that more than that was going on.
 
We talked to the lady at the Castle Reception and she explained that one of the things that was happening was the clearing  of the vegetation from the far archway. Apparently this has grown over many years and was stopping the water from going through. This photo taken in 2015 shows this very clearly. The guy, who owns the building that was the mill, also owns the land at that side of the bridge, which is why you can’t go down to it!  And he complained that they were ‘taking’ his land. Well, they weren’t, they were simply taking the river bank back to where it was originally. Land owners!! We did wonder whether that was him on the other side of the river, just keeping an eye on what was happening on ‘his’ land.
 
The other issue we talked about was the thorny question of whether damaged bridges should be replaced with a more modern bridge or repaired to bring them back to what they were. Often it is visitors, and people living away from the bridge, who want the bridge to look exactly as it was, whilst locals just want a bridge.  Here there was no argument as it is a Listed building, wasn't totally destroyed and is recognised to be seen as part of the Castle, although it isn’t.
 
The guy who is in charge of the renovation says it will be ‘as was’, but he is working to a deadline of 30 September, so the work is full on. Local people, walkers, cyclists will be very, very pleased when it is finished. They just want to get across the river again!