“Dancing Across The Valley”

Thursday 29 February 2024

“Dancing across the valley” - Lord Norman Fosters’ words to describe the beautiful Millau bridge he designed, which connects two plateaus in central France. 

It may be ‘just’ a motorway bridge on the A75 but its beauty and elegance sets it apart from so many others. The seven pillars are huge and they taper and split at the top, like massive tuning forks.

As a teenager back in the 70’s I remember having a full page newspaper pull out of the first Severn Bridge on my bedroom wall (in between the pin ups of Donny Osmond and Mud!!). It must have been a special supplement, possibly commemorating 10 years since it opened in 1966, and it was a beautiful image of it at sunset. That fondness for bridges continues to this day and Dave & I love them - from the ancient Roman ones to the ultra modern ones. The Millau Viaduct has been on our wish list to see since it opened 20 years ago.

To make the most of our time here we firstly drove under the bridge along the River Tarn and its valley, with the viaduct towering 343 meters above us. Then onto the nearby town of Millau which, thanks to the traffic now using the bridge, no longer grinds to a halt during July and August when most of Paris’s population heads south to the coast (which is where we are now!). 

From Millau we then headed up to the viewpoint and excellent visitor centre on the northern plateau. With videos and drone footage there is a step by step explanation of the design vision, the decades of planning and the 3 years of construction at a cost of £220 million.

The sun was trying to break through and small shafts of light occasionally lit up the mighty white steel cables but the skies remained stubbornly grey. If you check Google images there are some amazing photos of the bridge with blue sky above and low white cloud in the valley - very ethereal.

Driving over the tallest bridge in the world only takes a couple of minutes - just about enough time to admire the beautiful design elements as it unfolds before you. The gentle curve, the sleek lines of the pillars and cables, the massive scale of the engineering, the absence of unnecessary signage and the tantalising glimpses of the distant valleys.

When submitting his design Norman Foster said he was "definitely NOT the person that they should choose if they wanted to build a bridge across the river. I wanted to build a bridge to cross the whole valley, the entire space between the two high plateaux on either side, something that would be elegant and uniform and delicate and take account of the grandeur and sweep of the landscape."

The final words of this blog post should go to the bridges French engineer, Michel Virlogeux, who said “Transparence, Simplicité, Elegance”.