A Bridge - Not Too Far Away

I recently had a need to travel up North for a quick visit to the Inverness area. The route I took followed the line of General Wade's Military Roads for much of the way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_military_roads_of_Scotland

Here you can see the modern road following the military road to the northeast. Loch Ness is just out of sight behind the hills on the left. My car is pointing the wrong way as I took this snap on the way home to Lowland Scotland.

I won't slip into my Nationalistic mode at the moment but I did take this snap on my way North.

My trip included some spare time so I nipped into the local hostelry and had a pleasant time drinking with the locals, a couple of farmers, two handymen, a forester, an engineer from Glasgow (his accent gave him away), a passing lycra clad cyclist who murdered two pints of diet coke before pedalling off and a bunch of walking German tourists, and the barman who told me a wee bit of local history.

The hotel was called the Whitebridge Hotel which was built on the site of a 'king's house' used by the soldiers who built the military roads.

"Whitebridge is a long established Highland Hotel, built in 1899 on the site of a King's House which was destroyed by fire some years before. A King's House was a hostelry used by the soldiers while in a specific area. This King's House was used by the soldiers of General Wade while they were stationed in the Highlands. Building roads was one of the troops duties, and you can still see the original bridge built here in the 18th Century."

http://www.whitebridgehotel.co.uk/hotel.html

The bridge referred to still exists, here it is in all its glory.

The bridge crosses the River Fechlin which eventually feeds into Loch Ness at Foyers. The advantage of crossing at the bridge rather than fording the river in its steep little valley is obvious. However the following picture shows the possibilities for an ambush as the way across is very narrow, no more than 3 or 4 men wide.

Speaking of bridges, I bought one yesterday.

As you can see it is an MDF offering from Warbases. I choose the single arch option as it is an experimental purchase. They have a two span and a three span option too.

http://war-bases.co.uk/

It is a multi-part kit and is very easy to put together using white glue (PVA) and a couple of elastic bands.

 

Some of the joins are a bit obvious (the bane of MDF kits) but a decent modeller will soon solve that little problem. An 'old school' player will have no problem with it as it is, perhaps with  a touch of paint.

I hope to use this bridge with my 12mm Napoleonics. My bases are 40mm wide and you can see that they fit the bridge nicely.

The bridge also neatly fits an Hexon II tile which is 100mm across the flats.

In Heroscape terms it is one whole tile and one half tile each side wide.

This shot shows the possibilities of matching the bridge to a narrow gully using multiple layers of Heroscape tiles.

Watch this space for further developments.