What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that–everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness….I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

Virginia Woolf – Her last letter to Leonard before drowning herself in the River Ouse.

Today’s pictures feature the extraordinarily beautiful fourteenth century bridge at Holt, near Wrexham.

The bridge is made from local sandstone. It spans the River Dee and links Holt, on the Welsh side of the river, with its twin village of Farndon on the English side. I wrote about it in a poem some time ago:

A bridge that links and divides.

Two nations, border country, and in my mind

I’m so close to the edge.

But fly-strewn water fills my mouth,

and drowns all possible words.

There are several legends connected with the bridge. One concerns two young boys, Madoc and Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, who were thrown from the bridge in dead of night soon after it was opened. The boys, relatives of Llewelyn, the last true Price of Wales, were murdered by John, Earl Warren, and Roger Mortimer, feudal lords allied to Edward I, to claim their inheritance.

Legend has it that the boys’ cries can still be heard in the river on dark nights.

Picture of the River Dee and Holt Bridge, ©Bobby Seal