History Challenge & Journal

[dtaai-maai]

Not bad, but quite a bit earlier.

[caller]

I think the bridge was built around 1600? Just a guess!

You're out by a few hundred years, I've crossed it and never knew!

Edit: Sonning Bridge is lovely, but it only dates from 1775!

[Jimbob]

For my sins, I've walked the Thames from Putney to Goring.

Caller, A noble journey ! and of course near every bridge would have been a public house.
(I wonder how many pubs there on the banks of the Thames? )

[redzonerocker]

Okay - forget the name of the bridge -

Ok

HOW OLD?

As we can't google (yet)
I would guess somewhere around the 550 mark?

How many bridges are there altogether?

Again a googleless guess
About 30 odd in London + approx x 4 for the rest of the length, plus a few tunnels etc = a grand total of 185?

[dtaai-maai]

Good guess, rzr, though it's a tad nearer 1 per mile.

OK, enough already - go with the Googling, guys. (Golly, what a lot of hard 'g's...)

[STEVE G]

I see that it's the rather approriately titled 'Old Bridge' at Radcot. I've just been reading that there is a 'Newbridge' nearby that was built in 1250, so it's perhaps time they thought of a new name for that one!

[Siani]

I have been racking my brain to see if there was an old roman Bridge...still it's solved...

Apparently there are There are over 200 bridges, over 20 tunnels?

[dtaai-maai]

over 20 tunnels?

Good grief no - maybe 6?

Dartford Tunnel
Blackwall
Rotherhithe
Pedestrian tunnel at Greenwich

EDIT: then I got stuck and snuck a look at Google - and bingo - 20!!

But I hadn't been thinking of the underground system.

There are a surprising number of medieval bridges remaining in some degree - but they've been renovated so often, without being completely removed and replaced, that it's impossible to say how much of them remains.

But I remember driving through the Rotherhithe tunnel in the 80s and 90s, and it is so inappropriate for modern traffic - two narrow lanes with sharp bends - obviously made for horse-drawn carriages. Wonderfully unmodern.

[Jimbob]

D-M
Do foot bridges at various weirs count?

[dtaai-maai]

Okay, moving on.

NO GOOGLE

The Grand Tour

What can you tell me about it from your own past reading? (i.e. again -no google!)

When, who, where, etc.

Any little snippets of info welcome.

[richard]

A circus?

[Jimbob]

Okay, moving on.

NO GOOGLE

The Grand Tour

What can you tell me about it from your own past reading? (i.e. again -no google!)

When, who, where, etc.

Any little snippets of info welcome.

Byron and Shelley had a good time on the Grande Tour. T'was the thing to do and be enlightened travelling around Europe without an Army wrecking the place.
Thomas Cook really packaged up the tour and made it upper middle class.

[sandman67]

Yup.....it was the tour around old Europe that you went on to get a literary and classcal "education".

There was an American traditional version that was popular in the 20s and 30s wth the It Crowd that my ex-wife and I did on our honeymoon called The Grand Circle. That took in visits to Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Monument Valley, The Grand Canyon and towns like Moab, Green River, Mexican Hat etc....(theres a National Forest by near Bryce I cant remember the name of and some other smaller stops along the route). Was a wonderful trip, especially on a Harley-A-Like big Honda cruiser.

[Jimbob]

the Grand tour now ventures further and is often called the 'Gap' year, or the post retirement grand trip, down the Rhine etc. These I believe are called SKIDs =Spend Kids Inheritance and Die

[PeteC]

I put this out more as a question rather than a challenge. Was watching HC about the Japanese invasion and occupation of Malaysia. They clearly indicated that the Japanese, as a thank you to Thailand for allowing them passage and access to the country (cough, cough), gave Thailand four of the northern Malaysian provinces. I didn't know that at all and thought Thailand had acquired them much earlier in some 18th or 19th century war. I guess another thing that the Thai history books don't stress too much, and truthfully I'm shocked that when Japan lost, Thailand didn't return the provinces to Malaysia, or was forced to by the allies. I guess we now know the root of the rebellion down there. The 3 problem provinces we always hear about are Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani.

Does anyone know the fourth that was given to them, and any more details concerning the above story? Pete