Across the gorge

It’s known as Rumbling Bridge, an ancient arch of stones that curves thrillingly/scarily (delete according to temperament) high above the River Braan as it thunders through a rocky gorge. The rumble impressed Queen Victoria when she visited – ‘an immense volume of water, with a deafening noise’ – and artist Sir John Everett Millais. Painting in a riverside hut (which the torrent submerged at one point) and pestered by a man who ‘preached, barefooted, to the rocks and trees all day’, he captured the falls in dramatic detail on a vast 6x4 foot canvas and called it The Sound of Many Waters (1876). The bridge was badly damaged by a lorry last year but has just reopened.