Ninety seconds on Chapel Bridge
Two hundred and five metres end to end, and one crossing at the pace of whoever is in front is what it usually gets. Come back the other way for the painted boards overhead. The gaps among them are where the fire shows.
The triangular boards wedged into the roof frame are the reason to slow down. They were begun in the early seventeenth century as a cycle of the town's own history and its patron saints, and the run of them is broken: of the hundred and eleven that were still in place, eighty six were burned partly or past recognition, and the rebuild left the gaps rather than painting replacements. Noticing that takes a second crossing, back the other way with the head up, because the first one moves at the speed of the crowd. The water tower standing off the deck at the bend is not part of the walk. It went up before the bridge did and has been a lookout, an archive, a prison and an armoury since.
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