Water of Lieth Walkway Closure for one day? Nope - 10 weeks
This sign is located at the bottom of Baberton Loan in Juniper Green. As you can see the sign says that the Water of Lieth Walkway is cosed on the 4/2/08.
As the date wasn’t the 4th of February I continued on along the walkway for about half a mile. This was the view I was met with.
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The footpath is totally impassible at Veitches Bridge. By the looks of it the bridge isn’t actually there anymore - just scafolding. Unfortunatly this meant I had to walk all the way back to Baberton Loan - another half mile.
I found this bit of wood lying on the ground there. It’s the diversion route for when the bridge is closed. Reading the information the bridge is actually closed for 10 weeks - not one day as the sign says. Acording to the sign the bridge is being completely refurbished.
The diversion route involves 2 very steep roads up to Lanark Road, and the footpath along the south side of the road is only about 50cm wide. Hardly safe on such a busy road.
Also interesting on the first sign is the bit that says “(date” - and you can just see the right bracket has been removed. It looks like somebody in Edinburgh Councils sign department thought it would be funny. The “4/2/08″ has been added afterwords. These signs are all over Lanark road so it must have taken some time to go round amending the signs.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
The bridge is closed to be completely refurbished. It is having a new deck put on it - the whole works. The bridge is over 100 years old and has done well to get this far. Instead of complaining about the 2 steep hills (Blinkbonny Road?? - I don’t THINK so!!) why don’t you just be patient and be grateful that we have such a FANTASTIC facility as the Water of Leith path and look forward to the bridge being reopened? So what if the sign is misleading - if you had stopped to read the map, you would have been able to see that the path will be closed for about 10 weeks and then you wouldn’t have your long walk of all of 1/2 mile.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
The sign said it was closed for one day - and that day was in the past. I had no reason to read the other signs. The diversion sign was also lying on the ground after being snapped off.
At that point I had no idea the bridge was being refurbished. How could I know?
The bridge was damaged by a tree some years ago, which was finally fixed last summer. I now know that when the bridge was fixed they discovered structural issues with it.
The walkway is used by many people less able than me. The path is steep - much more so that any other bit of the entire path.
I pointed out the sign being worng to the council a number of times since but they deny all knowledge of the work - even though it’s being done by their own bridges department.
Misleading signs are one thing I believe in getting fixed.