What super-sized carrot would have to be dangling from a string for you to walk across this bridge? And if you’re not afraid of crossing bridges, substitute your own fear. And if you have none, well this post won’t mean much to you.
The Tay Road Bridge by Russ Hamer (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Moira Mason a fellow gephyrophobiac from Dundee, Scotland walked across the Tay Road Bridge this month. First over and then aborted plans to get a ride back and walked it again according to the UK’s Evening Telegraph.
The Tay Bridge is the second longest road bridge in Europe at nearly 1.5 miles over the Firth of Tay. The Queen Mother officially opened it in August 1966.
I watched the video taken of a small part of Moira’s walk and was fixated on what she did with her left hand. Her hand was seeking out the railing but when it found it, pulled back as if it didn’t want to touch it. Her hand seems to be searching for something and guided by something we can’t see. It seems restless.
I’ve experienced something similar with my hand when I’ve tried to walk across bridges or been in high places like atop European cathedrals. My hand seems separate from me and doesn’t know what to do. At once it wants to steady me by holding on to something, a railing, a wall, or another person, and at the same time is repulsed by touching the very thing that’s causing the jitters.
I can’t recall ever seeing another person with a fear of bridges actually walking across a bridge. At the end of the video Moira’s body relaxes, she leans against the railing, puts her gloved hand across her eyes and enunciating every word says emphatically, “I DID IT!” I feel her exhaustion.
Hurray! She did it for a charity fundraiser and won her daughter a wedding. Now, that’s an important reason.
Take the poll below and let me know what would you walk across this bridge for? Enter your own answers. And if you’re not a gephyrophobiac, substitute your own fear.
Gephyrophobiac 
If I knew my fear was just in me, rather than some real danger, this would be easier to be sure of. So, I might swim across the deep end in the swimming pool for a reasonable reward (I’m scared of water, specially if I know I can’t touch the bottom, but intellectually I know I can swim that far), whereas I can’t think of a big enough carrot to get me to go up a climbing wall without a rope.
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Thanks Rachel! It’s interesting to hear about what other people fear. It’s easy to assume other people don’t have them. 🙂 I wouldn’t go up a wall without a rope either. That seems reasonable to me. The swimming thing would be fine for me …. but I must admit if it were in a murky lake, I’m not so sure.
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