The Forth Road Bridge has featured several times in my Photo A Day project, and justifiably so – it is an elegant and attractive-looking structure in a scenic location.

But that makes it easy to forget its primary purpose – it’s a bridge to take you from one side of a river to the other.

Today was a windy in Scotland. Very windy. Maybe not Joplin, Missouri windy, but very windy nonetheless. And because of the wind, the bridge was closed.

So this empty stretch of motorway is not looking like that because there’s no traffic, it’s because all the vast quantity of traffic that normally uses it is stuck on small local roads, trying to get to the next bridge; fifteen miles upriver and not built for the volume of traffic.

It would have been awkward enough to be stuck in that, but it got worse – my wife slipped while on a bus and was pretty badly shaken up by the fall. The friends who were with her (quite correctly) insisted that an ambulance be called, and she was taken to Edinbugh Royal Infirmary… And the overcrowded roads, fallen trees and so on made it really hard to get to her.

Eventually, it all sorted out – my normal commute of thirty minutes took just over three and a half hours, I went on to the hospital and took Marie home – she is a bit shaken up and rather stiff but otherwise well.

I’ll happily wait a good few months before we see wind like that again, please!