Jeff McClure - I would guess you already know that the Hawes Inn (Miscalculation photo) is the Inn where Robert Louis Stevenson wrote more of Treasure Island and is the snitteg for the first part of the book. The Inn was there long before the bridge.- Another wee factoid about the bridge: During WWII it was draped with camouflage nets and painted in camo designs. The Germans attempted to bomb it on several occasions but the extensive anti-aircraft batteries around it (you can still see the concrete emplacements) and the apparently effective camouflage prevented it from being knocked out. It is also the fifth bridge to cross the Firth of Forth, so it is sometimes called the First of Forth Fifth or the Fifth Firth of Forth. Firth is a local modification of fjord (which is also where we get ford as in a place to cross a river. It refers to an inlet or a narrow place between an island and the mainland. In Scots Gaelic it is usually spelled Foirthe. The river's name Uisge For (pronounced Wiskey Fore means black water because of the dark peat stain in the water. Stirling Castle, where both Wallace and Robert the Bruce defeated English Armies, was situated on the first ford above the Firth of Forth. It was at the first ford above the Firth of Forth that the Bruce defeated Edward's Army, took his Royal Seal, and won independence for Scotland.Now you perhaps understand why the Scots could never call the Firth of Forth something mundane like Edinburgh Bay. I think they get a perverse pleasure out of saying all the Firth of Forth history lessons associated with place names that begin with the letter F in the heaviest accent they can muster.
