In news that would possibly interest not a great deal of people:
I’d been dimly aware that the Cowes Floating Bridge was due for replacement and that it would happen this year, but had no idea of the exact date. Completely unwittingly, I had already made my last ever journey on it just a week ago today, on Boxing Day. On the day I was rushing to catch the Red Funnel ferry to Southampton and didn’t stop to take any photos.
This was a great shame because I had been intending to capture the two passenger cabins, long and narrow along each side of the vessel and open at each end. They were painted in an array of mauves and pinks, on top of which were assorted poems and artwork contributed by local residents and schoolchildren in 2005. It also means the only photos I have of her are from exactly one year before, on Boxing Day 2015.
Travelling on the floating bridge was always an interesting experience. She looks every inch her forty-two years and is noisy, shabby and rusty. But herein lies the charm; the crossing takes a few minutes, not even enough time to sit down unless you are really intent on doing so. It is an in-between space, yet one that acts as a backdrop to the lives of residents, tourists and other travellers.
From Cowes to Cowes
If you’re not familiar with it, you may be thinking that I’m talking out of my hat and that this floating bridge thing looks oddly like a ferry. It is in fact a chain ferry, a floating vessel attached to a pair of chains which are themselves anchored to dry land at each end. The ferry, by way of its motor, pulls itself along the chains in each direction. If, like me you live in Dorset, you’ll probably be familiar with the slightly bigger chain ferry that operates between Sandbanks and Studland.
The Cowes Floating Bridge is rather more modest, and clanks back and forth across the River Medina every ten minutes or so for up to eighteen hours a day. The gap she has to cross varies with the tide between around 250 and 500 feet with the journey itself taking two or three minutes. It’s an essential transport service for pedestrians travelling between Cowes and East Cowes, and a handy alternative for motorists who would otherwise have to travel twelve miles south to Newport to cross the river.
While the existing ferry bears the imaginative name Bridge No. 5 it is in fact the eighth ferry to operate across the Medina, but only the fifth to be commissioned by the Isle of Wight council since they took over the service in 1909. She entered service in 1975 and has transported over sixty million people across the Medina in her service life.
I’m certainly looking forward to seeing the new ferry installed on the chains. Will she also clock up forty-plus years of service? Who can say. But for now we will say a fond farewell to Bridge No. 5.
A foot passenger launch will be operating across the Medina until the new floating bridge enters service. This website has more information about the works that will be going on in the absence of the floating bridge service: https://onthewight.com/floating-bridge-understanding-the-works-taking-place/
Almost all of my floating bridge photos are shown on this blogpost. I’ve put them all together in a Flickr album at https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewjhaz/albums/72157676969770211
