I'm curious about the bridge (Draw Bridge?). The cables coming down from a frame above the bridge appear to me to have the function of drawing a section of the bridge up for water traffic and at the same time, there are all the stanchions supporting the bridge which would be in the way of boat traffic. I see a lot of these bridges in pictures posted by my Netherland friends. What can you tell me about this style bridge or this bridge in particular? Thanks in advance Mirka. You know how curious I am.
Larry, it is indeed a drawbridge. I was trying to find more info about why it's build this way, but nothing really on it so I'm going to make some guesswork from what I know about the fort.
The fort was built in 16th century during the Eighty Year's War on the border between NL and Germany on the only road on the sandy ridge in the marshes between Germany and Groningen. I don't think the bridge was meant to open for much water traffic, the only traffic around the fortifications were small boats partroling the waters and I don't even think that it was meant for that. The bridge, when opened and the gate closed would cut any possibility to enter the fortification. There is another such bridge on the other side of the fort, this is from the Dutch side the other close to German border. Hence no need for the wider passage.
At this moment you can rent a canoe or a little boat to go on the chanels, the marshes have dried out and the walls are not that high - it's a tiniest fort I have ever seen ( you can check the "bird view" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fortbourtange.jpg ) but with the marshes in the 16-18 century and different way of defending your country, I can imagine that this would be enough to defend the only road connecting those 2 countries.
I hope this answers your questions.
If you'd check the link to pictures of this type of bridges in NL: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=ophaalbrug&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2 you can see that the opening between the bridge supports is wider or smaller depending on what kind of traffic it has to serve. If the opening needs to be quite wide, you have a "double draw bridge"...
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question as well as giving me a geography and history lesson, both of which I like. I fully understand now....or at least my curiosity has been satisfied!
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