Strange that the French ignored the fact that the architect is ENGLISH during the opening ceremony. Cheese eating surrender monkeys that they are! :wink:
I'm jus kiddin.....before I get hate posts
<snort>
Every time I see something like that - bridge / tunnel / chunnel - my first thought is about the effect of an accident. Are trucks allowed on it? (for some reason I can't get into ossoB's thread)
Sarah Morgan wrote:Strange that the French ignored the fact that the architect is ENGLISH during the opening ceremony. Cheese eating surrender monkeys that they are! :wink:
No need to apologize. Nothing wrong with cheese eating!
Seriously though, I heard on CNBC last night that this bridge could be of tremendous strategic military importance in that it could cut as much as 4 hours off a retreat. :wink:
Is that 'Le grande fromage' on your head Occom Bill?
The French would not 'approve' you know!
I've been to Cheddar on holiday - it's a lovely place. I was there on midsummer eve, they roasted a boar on the village green, and we drank scrumpy! So quaint.....so pagan!
Sarah Morgan wrote: The French would not 'approve' you know!
And here I would of thought it was obvious that's no concern of mine.
Sarah Morgan wrote:I've been to Cheddar on holiday - it's a lovely place. I was there on midsummer eve, they roasted a boar on the village green, and we drank scrumpy! So quaint.....so pagan!
Well color me ignorant! I knew of no such place (sounds lovely, though).
Sarah Morgan wrote :
Strange that the French ignored the fact that the architect is ENGLISH during the opening ceremony. Cheese eating surrender monkeys that they are!
Sarah, the French didn't ignore Norman Foster.
As you can see in the link bellow, Chirac was with him on the opening ceremony.
Opening ceremony in Millau
You are nice girl so I will not post revenge coments. I love you.
Bonsoir Francis......Pardon, he WAS there, but there was NO mention of him in his speech! Even the French would not dare not invite him. :wink:
Cheddar (Gorge) is where the original cheddar cheese comes from, but I'm sure Wisconsin Cheddar is every bit as yummy. :wink:
Francis, if you look closer, you can just see a line of asylum seekers making their way to Engleterre!
Moving on (:wink:), has anyone ever seen the Falkirk Wheel between the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow? Gotta be the coolest water-way since the Panama Canal.
Quote:The Falkirk Wheel is the world's only rotating boatlift and is used to connect the Forth & Clyde and Union canals in central Scotland.
This magnificent, mechanical marvel has been constructed to 21st Century, state-of-the-art engineering and it is already being recognised as an iconic landmark worthy of Scotland's traditional engineering expertise.
Designed to replace a series of lock gates built in the 19th Century - long since demolished and replaced by housing - the Falkirk Wheel is the showpiece of the Millennium Link project where coast-to-coast navigation of the canals has been re-established for the first time in over 40 years.
Source
Sarah Morgan wrote:Cheddar (Gorge) is where the original cheddar cheese comes from, but I'm sure Wisconsin Cheddar is every bit as yummy.
Its nothing like it, apparently ... A. couldnt believe the cheddar here was cheddar because it was nothing like cheddar ... if you get my drift ...
About Sir Norman Foster, Millau Bridge architect :
Norman Foster, architect
LOL Francis, very clever.
Quote:Malgré la fierté tricolore du Président de la République qu'une entreprise française, Eiffage, ait bâti un pont sublime en si peu de temps et en réalisant de telles prouesses technologiques, on est cependant obligé de mettre un bémol à l'ardeur présidentielle. Eh oui, l'architecte de l'ouvrage, a le fâcheux défaut d'être citoyen britannique et de travailler à Londres... Nobody is perfect.
Some
great pictures on that site ... You can track its development over time (what I just linked in is the 2004 album) ...
Personally - call me conservative, but - I can see the architectural beauty of it and all, but I still primarily see it as a landsculptural monstrosity ...
Look at this last picture ... close your eyes and imagine it without viaduct ... imagine living in that valley, it being your home, your childhood ... open your eyes and see what they plumped into it.
As an artefact of modernity, viewed in isolation - beautiful. As something dumped into the landscape, each of its giant metal paws the surface of a small farm, towering its alien, industrial shadow over the so humanly sized rural valley that was ... a masterful abomination.
It does seem that it was built, hmmmmm, as a design challenge and to decrease some drivers' inconvenience. Not a necessity.
and I really can't imagine a helicopter landing on it, now that I've looked at that album. Soooooo not going there.
Quote:Cheese eating surrender monkeys that they are!
Aah, the immortal wisdom of groundskeeper Willie.
That bridge is unbelievable, that is something I will have to see in person someday.
Yes, nimh, I agree it is a blunt disturbance of a lovely valley, though it is beautiful in its way. If you lived in that valley, it would be hard to screen the view of it, it would be always just there, in your face.
I am not personally used to viaducts as a concept - a bridge over land; it takes some adjustment for me. Bridges over water, I get. Between mountains - well, I guess I do see that all the time, driving through California, but the lengths of the bridging tend to be shorter.
The Los Angeles freeway system, which I do know well, is a sequence of sort of stubby viaducts that bisect neighborhoods, providing zillions of fume belching autos access across a huge basin of land...
No offense Francis 