Thursday, August 08, 2013

The bridge at Saint-Aignan

The views from the terrace of the Château de Saint-Aignan are pretty on a nice day. The Cher river glides past below, separating into two branches around a narrow island. The bridge connects the town to the island and to Noyers-sur-Cher on the right bank.

The Cher Valley and the bridge seen from the terrace of the St.-Aignan castle.

The bridge is two lanes and is the only practical bridge across the river for kilometers on either side. There are a couple of smaller, one-lane bridges close by, but they don't work for trucks and most tourist traffic through our area. Consequently, summer traffic on our bridge can get a bit heavy.

A closer look.

The town copes with the traffic by setting the traffic lights to blinking yellow, giving bridge traffic the right-of-way through town. The problem is that it's hard to cross that line of cars and trucks if you're going in the opposite direction. There's talk of a by-pass and a second bridge, but I don't think that's the right solution. Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be any real project on the boards at the moment.

5 comments:

  1. I love that building with the asymmetric roof! It looks very old. I could sit and look at it for hours. P.

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  2. Note to Tim: If I'm not mistaken (Walt, please correct me if I'm wrong), the building with the asymmetric roof is the Mange-Grenouille restaurant, one of Saint-Aignan's finest restaurants.They do some of the best frog's legs I've ever eaten.

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  3. Nor can they widen the bridge without tearing down a few buildings.

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