The Bridge of Brier Dene.

a3 illustration ink and water colour, certificate of authenticity issued with each print securely packaged in a postal tube, please exercise care removing your print from the packaging.

The mouth of the Brier Dene spills out directly onto the beach past the Links at Whitley Bay.

Choked with invasive bullrushes or cat tail reeds the stream is brought to and abrupt halt. Decking has been constructed to assist walkers access the stream and beach over which we have a fabulous stone bridge, I don’t know if this is the true story of the troll bridge? but I love it and I’ll share it here, (apologies if it is incorrect).

The tale goes like this, North Tyneside Council needed a footbridge to span the river mouth, wide enough to accommodate seasonal flooding, the engineer/architect/builder they commissioned to design and build the bridge came up with a good few solutions in keeping with the area and so on but, he himself was not happy with his own work.

One night as he is putting his little daughter to bed she asks her father what is troubling him, he tells his daughter that he just can’t get the design for the new bridge right and he asked his wise little daughter what should he do?

So fetching her crayons she climbed up to her fathers drawing table, looked at his designs and thought for a while, as she sat with her little brow wrinkled in thought he asked her what was wrong? the little girl said nothing but, if I was going to draw a bridge I’d do it like this and she opened up her crayons and drew her fairy-tale bridge, and that is the very design the architect submitted, the bridge was built, and that is why we have a family of trolls and redcaps residing in the reeds and rushes under the bridge!