Pedestrian bridge across Gauja River, Sigulda
The bridge was built in 1979 across the river Gauja with the aim to create a round route for the visitors of Gauja river old valley. A scenic view can be observed from the bridge to Velnala (Devil's cave) cliffs and the Gauja river.
The idea about the building of the bridge originated in 1976 due to two reasons. The Velnalas (Devil’s caves) cliffs have been attractions for tourists for a long time ago. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was easy to approach the caves along the path which led askew along the steep slope. Later a special massive platform was established, supported by iron rails.
Due to a large number of visitors, the sandstone started to crumble, creating a threat to Velnala preservation. A small stage of the path the visitors had to walk above the cave. Here the sandstone layer is only about one meter thick, so the pedestrians gradually wore and endangered the roof of the cave.
As the visitors’ interest in the cave did no lessen, the necessity arose to figure out an alternative for the view of the cave – to create convenient access to the opposite bank were to establish the recreation place from where to view the scenic sandstone detrition as well as the picturesque Velnala (Devil’s cave). The second reason – already at that time the interesting, quite a long round route for Gauja river old valley visitors was planned to be developed. The building of the bridge was an opportunity to create such a route.
The bridge was built due to the support of Jānis Mengots, the deputy minister at the Ministry of Auto transport and motorways of Latvian SSR, who organized the designing and building at the end of the 1970ies. The authors of the project of shroud construction pedestrian bridge were engineer J. Zavickis and architect A. Ādmine.
The bridge was unveiled in 1979. In 1980 the path and platform at the Velnala were removed. Since that time tourists can see Velnala from the opposite bank of Gauja river where a recreation place is also set up.
The bridge since its unveiling in 1979 opened possibilities for pedestrians and cyclists to cross Gauja river in this vicinity thus freely accessing both banks of the river.
The bridge in the vicinity of Velnala is under the technical supervision of Vidzeme regional administration of Nature Conservation Agency of Latvia. In 2008 all the wooden planking of the bridge was completely replaced.
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