Post by Charles Leon

About two miles downstream from Maidenhead stands what might be the Thames's most pragmatic footbridge. Summerleaze Bridge, spanning between Dorney in Buckinghamshire and Bray in Berkshire, began life in 1996 with a thoroughly unglamorous purpose: hauling gravel. When Eton College decided to construct Dorney Lake — their purpose-built Olympic rowing course — they faced a logistical puzzle: what to do with over 4 million tonnes of aggregate generated during a decade of digging? The solution was ingeniously simple. Build a conveyor belt across the Thames to the Summerleaze processing plant at Bray. The gravel sales helped finance the £17 million project, sparing Dorney's narrow lanes from countless lorry journeys that would have reduced them to rubble. The conveyor belt now doubles as a pedestrian and cycle link. No Turner paintings, no spectacular echoes, no medieval hermits praying for safe passage. Just 4 million tonnes of dirt that happened to leave behind a rather useful footpath.