The Langkawi Sky Bridge perches precariously over a spectacular chasm, 700m above sea level on Pulau Langkawi, an island within Malaysia’s Langkawi archipelago of 99 distinct islands¹.

Incredibly, the cable-stayed bridge actually curves 125m around a single support, sweeping out dramatically over the vast emptiness below.

Acrophobics should probably avoid watching this wonderfully terrifying Youtube video, and gephyrophobiacs definitely won’t enjoy these stunning bridge-level photos…

Thanks to Rusbridge.

The town of Progreso, Mexico, sits on a limestone shelf that falls away extremely gradually as it gets further out to sea. As a result, when they built a pier to allow cruise ships to dock here, it had to be long. Really long.

Measuring a phenomenal 6.5 kilometers (4 miles), this is the world’s longest pier.

The original pier was completed in 1942, and despite being little more than a two-lane highway, is actually quite nice looking seen from the beach. In this satellite shot you can clearly see where the original construction ends, and the more recent one begins.¹

Cruise ships dock here for a day or two to allow the tourists to visit some of the nearby archaeological sites, and we can see there’s one berthed here at the moment. Tourists need to take a bus to shore, which takes nearly 10 minutes!

The pier also plays a major part in the local container industry – we can see loads of them stacked on the pier – and there’s also a tanker here just now too.

For more long piers, see our previous posts on England’s 2.1 km Southend Pier (the world’s longest pleasure pier) and Australia’s 1.8 km Busselton Jetty².

Thanks to cboone and Michael.

This is the Aqueduct of Segovia, which was probably built during the second half of the 1st Century AD, and is one of the most significant and best-preserved Roman monuments in Spain.

Technically, this is just the bridge part of a much longer aqueduct which carries water to Segovia from 17 kilometres away. It is only when the aqueduct crosses Segovia’s Plaza Azoguejo that it really becomes a sight to behold. This ancient engineering masterpiece is comprised of 167 arches reaching up to 28.5 metres!

Some of the height is obvious in the Google Image thanks to the fantastic shadow, but here’s some ground level photos that give you a good sense of scale, and here’s another that conveys how incredibly old this structure is.

Thanks to Ignacio Sanz.

Connecting the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen is the Great Belt Fixed Link, another example of a confusing bridge / tunnel mash-up¹.

Starting on Funen at the Western end we have a 6611m bridge that carries both road and rail.

This bridge then abruptly ends at the tiny island of Sprogø, the site of a former prison used for women deemed “pathologically promiscuous”! During the bridge’s construction Sprogø’s landmass was quadrupled in size.

Here the road and rail tracks diverge, with the rail track diving under a tunnel to the North, while the road continues along the 6790m Eastern bridge.

This Eastern bridge has a single suspended span (without ground support) of 1624m, making it the second longest suspended span in the world. It would actually have been the title holder, at least temporarily, but for a delay in construction which meant that the longer-spanned Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge was completed first.

Prior to the construction of both the Great Belt and Akashi-Kaikyo bridges, the longest span title was held by the Humber Bridge in England, wich reigned from its construction in 1981 until 1998.

Everyone’s favourite Humber fact is that the perfectly vertical towers are actually 36mm² further apart at the top than they are at the bottom, due to the curvature of the earth!

Wikipedia has the complete list of largest suspension bridges and pages on the Great Belt, Sprogø and the Humber Bridge.

Thanks to Jonathan Rawle, Tobias Hader and Cyan

In the past we’ve featured some incredible feats of engineering in service of canals and their traffic, but perhaps none as elegant as the Barton Swing Aqueduct, England.

Designed by Edward Leader Williams¹ and first used in 1893, the aqueduct carries the Bridgewater Canal over the Manchester Ship Canal. If a tall vessel needs to pass underneath on the MSC, the 71m-long iron trough swings through 90° to allow them clear passage.

Gates at either end of the bridge hold around 800 tonnes of water in place while it swings, and another set of gates on either bank hold back the rest of the canal.

Furthermore, this is actually a double swing bridge, as the Barton Swing Bridge pivots on the same purpose-built island simultaneously. How cool is that?

More about the Barton Swing Aqueduct, the Manchester Ship Canal and Edward Leader Williams at Wikipedia.

See our other posts on European Barge Lifting, A Canal Across Germany, the Corinth Canal, the Caen Hill Flight and the Saint Lawrence Seaway for more impressive canal engineering.