Even though this was not much more than a complicated way of walking under a bridge, I got unexpectedly nervous about this.
It was a fun thing to do, but it worried me a lot.
And I, slightly, wonder why.
Probably because I got it as a present and I didn't choose it.
I'm highly enthusiastic about ziplines. (See, among others, here, here, here, here, here and here.) And I've been abseiling from high structures, like the Euromast in Rotterdam or the ArcelorMittal Orbit in London. I've even slept (comfortably) in a room hanging on the side of a cliff or stood on the wing of a flying biplane.
So heights don't bother me, right?
In fact, heights often scare me.
I'm not fully sure when.
I get nervous near cliff edges and other unsecured deep drops. But that's ok. That's where being afraid of heights makes evolutionary senses.
And I'm generally fine when I'm wearing climbing gear and am attached to something.
For me, the tricky bits are guardrails, especially if they are lower than my center of gravity.
I'm quite calm hanging outside an observation tower, a hundred meters above the ground on a rope that's a centimeter wide. (Well, "calm" might be overstating it. I'm excited, as that's something new and interesting. But I'm not hanging there and fearing the height.)
In fact, when I did abseil down the Euromast, walking towards the railing of the observation deck (before I clipped into the abseil rope) was more scary than anything else that day. And that's a public observation deck where people go to enjoy the view. Not to confront their fears.
So I wasn't quite sure what effect Müngstener Brücke would have.
On one hand, I would be wearing a full climbing harness and be clipped in to a safety cable at all times. On the other hand, I would be walking next to a railing that might be too low for comfort all the time during the trip.
Also, I didn't know how 'wobbly' the bridge would be. Yes, it's a massive steel bridge. But it's also an active railway bridge and trains crossing the bridge might be shaking it up a bit.
Lastly, especially after my Via Ferrata experience earlier this year, I was concerned about the physical effort. I had been enjoying the Via Ferrata, but after walking up for 200 meters, I was worn out and stopped. And while Müngstener Brücke is only a 100 meter climb, that's still the equivalent of walking up the stairs of a 30-floor office building. Doable? Yes. But possibly exhausting.
As it is often the case with things that feel scary, there wasn't any problem when doing it.
There are stairs all the way, sufficiently high railings on one side, a massive bridge on the other. It would (mostly) have felt safe even without the safety harness. The steps themselves were solid metal (and not metal grating), so you could look down at your feet without seeing the ground way down below.
And when they renovated the railway tracks a couple of years ago, they put the rails on a spring-loaded surface to dampen the vibrations. So even with a train going across, the bride doesn't shake much. (Though the dampening was to reduce fatigue on the steel beams and not for the comfort of bridge walkers.)
Additionally, walking up a hundred meters of stairs wasn't as much of an effort as I had feared. It is a bit tiring, but not exhausting. It probably helps that you go up along a bridge arc (as opposed to some regular upwards staircase), so the steps flatten out after a while, making walking increasingly easy.
So, after needless worrying, it all turned out to be fine. And enjoyable.
The default group size for a bridge walk is 15.
We got all into our safety gear and ready to walk to over to the bridge.
I liked the safety equipment a lot.
I had expected Via Ferrata-style systems with two carabiners and many attachment points for the steel cable. Resulting in a constant detaching and attaching.
Especially when it goes steeply upward (or down) cable lengths between attachment points tend to be short. You don't want to fall down even two meters (especially not straight onto a steel beam). And you also don't want a domino effect, where one person slips and takes the next two people (on the same cable) down as well. Often the rule is "no two people on the same cable segment", but with a group size of 15 people, this stretches the group a long way.
Here, they did two clever things.
First, they had little cone-shaped rubber bumpers every meter or so. You could easily move your carabiner over it, but if you fell, the carabiner wouldn't go further back then the previous bumper.
Second, and more relevant, you never had to unclip.
There was a little gap in the carabiner. Too small to let the cable through, but small enough to go over the metal plates with which the cable was attached to the bridge. Once you moved the carabiner over the first attachment point, it couldn't come off again until the end of the trip.
Aligning the gap in the carabiner with the steel plate was sometimes fiddly, but much easier than detaching and attaching two carabiners. And due to the rubber bumpers, the cable segments between attachment points could be long (maybe ten meters), so it didn't need to be done often.
And it was right for the purpose.
I know a 'ropes course' that has a safety system that doesn't require unclipping. And I hated that. Their solution was a long metal tube with a slit on one side. You put in a kind of metal cylinder (attached to your climbing harness) at the start and couldn't get out of it until the end. And that was annoying. If there was a group of people in front of you or someone going slow, there was no way to let someone else pass. Everything was determined by the slowest person or group on the course. Which wasn't fun for the people waiting behind. But also not for the slow one in front. Usually, in such situations, the slower persons are happy to let the faster ones go by. If only to be able to do the next section at their own speed and without feeling pressure from behind to hurry up..
Here, there were two reasons why a similar system (only cleverer - steel cables are cheaper and easier to maintain than steel tubes) worked well.
One one hand, this was a group activity. As the speed was (ultimately) determined by the slowest person anyway, it didn't matter much if you couldn't change the order.
More important, however, was that you could change the order. There were a number of triangular steel plates with a cable going 'up'. One person could move the carabiner onto the 'up' cable and someone else could move straight through. Then the first person could go from the 'up' cable back to the main cable, and places would have changed.
The first section was, as expected, steep, but no worse than a staircase in an old building.
Everyone seemed to be in a good mood.
The weather helped.
The previous day it had been hot, followed by a massive thunderstorm in the evening. Neither would have been fun on the bridge. But this was a nice, sunny day. Warm, but not too hot.
Soon we passed the halfway point. The climbing got easier and the views got better.
A short while later, we were at the top (the top of the path under the bridge - we couldn't go to the top of the actual bridge due to train traffic).
The bridge walk goes up on one side of the bridge and down on the other side. Mostly for timing reasons, as, during high season, the next group is already ascending the bridge while the previous one is still making its way down.
Which means that, at the top, we needed to pass from one side of the bridge to the other.
The easy alternative using a wide platform. (Where everyone gathered for the 'summit picture'.)
For the more adventurous minded, there were also two wooden planks connecting the sides of the bridge.
I opted out of this, but others crossed that with a nonchalant "look, no hands!" attitude.
We had a short pause to enjoy the views.
Unsurprisingly, after that we walked down the stairs on the other side of the bridge.
And, equally unsurprisingly, going down was much faster than going up.
And soon we were back on solid ground.
Fun trip. And, as it is often the case, at the end it is difficult to see why I was every worried about it at all.