Views from the Former Bridge Site (Part One)

The pool below the falls at the former bridge site is seen at the left of this photo in the foreground. The mountain slope comes down very abruptly on the opposite shore, giving one a walled-in feeling here. It is truly a very beautiful place, one of many along this wild river.

The cement foundation one sees here across the river is matched by another on this side of the river; I surmise that it was once the base of a foot bridge spanning the river here. Its relatively good condition leads one to believe that the bridge was in existence not all that long ago. I have found no reference to it in any of the sources I consulted.

These pretty lavender bell-shaped flowers were preening in the bright afternoon sun; a friend identified a similar flower as a harebell campanula, so I suspect these are also harebells (Campanula rotundifolia), known in Scotland as bluebells. They have succeeded in gaining a foothold here in one of the crevices in the bedrock at the former bridge site: the Wikipedia article describing them says that “[t]he plant often successfully colonises cracks in walls or cliff faces and dunes”, adding to the evidence for this identification.