Wojtek and Friend.

Having won the lottery for a pair of invitations to walk across the Fifth Forth Bridge, aka the Third Forth Bridge to Fife, that was today’s itinerary sorted. As advised, we left early as we would not be allowed across if we were late, travelled by bus as there was unlikely to be parking space at the Park and Ride which was our embarkation point and armed ourselves with passports for identification. It was obvious, by the time we had reached Princes Street that we had allowed far too much time so we paid Wojtek a visit, Mrs TD had not seen home before, though she had seen the maquette at a talk given by Aileen Orr during the winter. I was pleased, well, I always am when I pay him a visit, but for the first time I was able to Blip him with some admirers; in particular, a toddler was being told to “Say hello to Wojtek” and was clearly delighted to be able to do so.
 
I also took a picture of his head (for the benefit of Lady Findhorn who has a “thing” about the paint being worn off various portions of statues’ anatomy); he is missing the paint from his both his nose and ears, not to mention the paint on his back wearing a little thin while Poitr, his handler, has shiny fingers on his left hand.
 
We arrived at the bridge assembly point an hour early, but no one asked for our passports and we were ushered straight onto the bus to take us to the bridge itself, and from there, straight onto the bridge. The weather was good so it was a pleasant stroll, we were allowed one hour to make the crossing but, again, no one was checking; we could have taken as long as we wanted. Although I took about 50 pictures, I didn’t find it a great photo opportunity though I had a few mildly interesting ones of people taking selfies and pictures of one another. There was the one rather worrying second extra showing the slack in some of the cables, my first thought was that it was an artifact of the camera but a search of pictures on line suggests that it is real.