Tower Bridge steam-cleaned and an Essex Serengeti: the River Thames, part three

The third part of Jill Mead's look at a year in the life of the river takes in the waterway over the course of some of the colder monthsSee Part 1 and Part 2 of Jill's seriesShorter days, train strikes and the cosiness of staying in bed for a bit longer in the morning kept me local, literally across the road or out east in the Thames estuary.I'll never look at Tower Bridge in the same way after a visit to the bascule's chambers, underneath the roadway. I sense that Eddie, a long standing technical assistant, knows every bolt and rivet as he eloquently explains how it all works. Simply put, it's where the back-end counterweights of the bridge roadway go down, as the visible front end goes up.Standing in for scale is the technical assistant Eddie, a longstanding member of staff, inside one of the bascule chambers of Tower Bridge. Continue reading...