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Bridges or Fords ?

After reading this thread, what would you like to see on the anorien road ?

  • Bridges

    Votes: 4 36.4%
  • Fords (or bridges when necessary)

    Votes: 7 63.6%

  • Total voters
    11

slaMoria

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DISCLAIMER : This thread is by no mean official or supposed to offend anyone. I only want to give my opinion on this subject and share it with everyone.

Salutations everyone,

I and @Oberanio had a discussion yesterday about the utility of bridges on the Great West road in Anorien. The starting point of this conversation was a bridge being five times the size of the stream, which we both agreed was too much. However Oberanio made it smaller, I didn't wish it this way, I wanted to have a ford (not the car). To make it clear, this is a ford :
A simple road getting through a river where its bed lays high enough
Fording_an_Indian_River.jpeg

Thus we asked ourselves : Where were fords used ? But in fact this question was double, as we wondered how they were formed and if carts could use them easily.
To begin with, bridges are very strong and fast to cross, I will take as example of European cities, which have bridges everywhere. Think London, Berlin, Rome or Paris, where bridges happen every 200 metres. And even if most of these are recent, some are still very old and were major passage points. Out of towns, they could be found where trade was important or to link the two sides of a river. The most impressive medieval bridge coming to my mind is the Avignon bridge (pronounced like avinion (onion)), well known in France for its amazing 920 metres length, crossing the Rhone river and using some islands in the middle to get on the other side easier. Yet, as you can see, it is now broken, which might be explained by its expensive
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maintenance, and the subsequent absence of it. Although, bridges could also be smaller, such as this Mycenaean bridge from the 13th century BCE. Here, the river sides were too steep to make a ford, so ancient Greek made a bridge, nothing too fancy though.
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Furthermore, bridges were a symbol of power. In the medieval period, they were mainly built over hard to not crossable passages, and local lords raised crossing taxes whenever you needed to go through it. They were strategic points, as the only passage in miles, but also in war time, again, as a crossing point. Battles were fought for their control, such as the battle of the Stirling Bridge during the First war of Scottish independence.

Nevertheless, they were not always used, especially where the river flew slow and the river bed laid high. We have clear evidence that Tolkien himself made fords in Middle Earth. The Ford of Bruinen on the Great East road is the best example. Look at the films or books for further details. Fords were very commons, since they were free to pass and to build.

In my opinion, it is okay to have fords on main roads, as long as the river/stream isn't too wide and deep. Here is a quick ford I made for 3 meters wide river :
It will look better when we get to 1.13 and we have slabs put on the bed. Rivamp coming ?
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This is made to be an alternative to this bridge on the Anorien road:
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Alright, thank you for your attention, and get to vote.
 
I agree with more fords in general.
Not sure about the place in question here. It's close to the mountains and the terrain is hilly. There may be times of high water levels quite often in such places. The bridge above takes that into account with it's three arches. A ford seems possible at that place but would be blocked by high water levels, a bridge is a more reliable connection. The question is: "Is there someone to maintain the bridge who is willing to spent money for that increased reliablility?"
The military importance of the North-way connecting Minas Tirith with Edoras speaks for a bridge here imo.
 
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I agree that on many places fords do make sense to have, they are expensive to build and maintain but for this place I don't agree that it should be a ford. This road has been very important through its history, for a long time it served as a conncetion between gondor and other parts of the empire and also its close ally Arnor. It was probably also quite important throughout the wars Gondor fought in. Nowadays it serves as a connection to another one of Gondor's close allies, Rohan. It is and has been a very important path for houndreds of years and it would make sense if it had bridges for transport. The bridges would be especially important as the streams are fed by the mountains and would vary largely in size depending on the season and could be impossible to cross at certain points of the year. Of course the same applies for the ford of bruinen but unlike the bridge in anorien the ford of bruinen isn't as important. Someone needs to finance the bridge (which would be Arnor in this case) but the ford lies in the outskirts of Arnor and it wouldnt serve as an important connection. Concidering all this I think it would make more sense to have bridges instead for fords for this road but mabye not as important in other places of anorien.
 
the ford of bruinen isn't as important. Someone needs to finance the bridge (which would be Arnor in this case) but the ford lies in the outskirts of Arnor and it wouldnt serve as an important connection.
The ford of Bruinen lays on the Great East Road, which I consider more often used than the Anorien one, as it links the Vale and Dwarven kingdoms in the east to their conterparts in the Blue Mountains.
 
I agree with more fords in general.
Not sure about the place in question here. It's close to the mountains and the terrain is hilly. There may be times of high water levels quite often in such places. The bridge above takes that into account with it's three arches. A ford seems possible at that place but would be blocked by high water levels, a bridge is a more reliable connection. The question is: "Is there someone to maintain the bridge who is willing to spent money for that increased reliablility?"
The military importance of the North-way connecting Minas Tirith with Edoras speaks for a bridge here imo.
The ford would be blocked some days of the year, yes, but gold would be spared. And the terrain doesn't look that hilly here, but yeah, I get your point.
 
I agree with Eriol and Jonatan. More fords should be used on the server in general but not in places where a bridge would make more sense.
I am not familiar with the area of this bridge in particular so I'm not gonna partake in that part of the debate.
 
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