When the Bridge Goes Up: Local Secrets, Honest Stories & the Real Weymouth

This town runs on a bridge that goes up six times a day and does not care what you had planned.

Eight, ten, twelve, two, four, six in the winter. Two more lifts in the summer. A bell, the barriers, and then two hundred tonnes of steel tips up on each side and everyone on Custom House Quay stands there holding their shopping. Brenda, who is seventy six and was born up the hill in Chapelhay and grew up in the flats they built after the bombing, says nobody from Chapelhay was ever early for anything in their life. You wait, or you walk round. That is the whole town in one sentence.

I came here alone from Reading in the summer of 2023 after my job went. I rent two rooms above the harbour on the side visitors don't cross to. I am not from here and I don't pretend to be. What I have is three years of walking, listening, getting the bus wrong, and one old woman on Chapelhay Street who decided I needed sorting out. I wrote it all down. This is that.

What's in it

The bridge, properly. Winter and summer lift times, what the bell means, why the boats bunch up at the mouth before ten, what happens on Christmas Eve, the 1930 opening and the American granite at the north end, and Brenda's rule for never being caught on the wrong side.

Two towns, one harbour. Melcombe Regis on the beach side and old Weymouth on the Nothe side were forced into one borough in 1571 and have argued ever since. Which pubs are which, Hope Square, Cove Row, Trinity Road, the Chapelhay steps, and where the day trippers stop and the locals start.

Chapelhay. What the bombing did to this hill, what the council did in 1946, who still lives in the flats, why the view from Trinity Terrace is the best in town and nobody photographs it. Brenda's dad, the Channel Islands boats, and the trains that used to run through the streets to the Quay.

The chippy question. Marlboro, Bennett's, Fish 'n' Fritz, King Edwards, the Old Harbour, and the ones in Wyke and on Portland that people bring up to end the argument. Who says what, and what to order at each.

The sands and the Clock. The Punch and Judy pitch that has been there since about 1880 and the men who ran it, the Jubilee Clock and how the prom came out to meet it, Greenhill and the huts, Castle Cove off the Rodwell Trail, Bowleaze, and which end the town actually uses in October.

Portland without a car. The number 1 every fifteen minutes, which side to sit, the causeway, Chesil, the Bill, Church Ope, why Speed Week happens in the harbour in October, and what a kimberlin is.

What is being built and what isn't. Brewers Quay and the museum waiting on St Thomas Street, the Peninsula hotel plan, North Quay, the Bowl, the Rectory, the harbour walls, the flood scheme, the fireworks row this August. What has happened, what has not, and what people up the hill say about all of it.

A year from the bench at the Nothe. Pirate Fest and the parade from St Mary Street, Speed Week, the fort's Halloween, the lights in New Bond Street, panto at the Pavilion, the empty January beach, the first bridge lift with the sun on it in April.

How to live here alone. Buses, the Dorchester train, where the quiet cafes are on a wet Tuesday, and the honest bit about what it costs and who has been priced out of the seafront flats.

How it works

You pay, the download link arrives straight away, and it opens on whatever you have in your hand. About sixty pages. Brenda keeps me honest, so when the bridge times move, a shop on St Mary Street shuts or the number 1 changes its timetable, the book gets rewritten and everyone who already bought it gets the new version free. No second payment, ever.

Get When the Bridge Goes Up now

Who this is for

People who grew up here and left and still check whether the bridge is up on the harbour cam. People whose mum is still in Wyke or Westham. Anyone with a week booked in a flat on the Esplanade or a caravan at Bowleaze who wants the town rather than the leaflet. And anyone who has ever arrived somewhere alone in their forties and needed a Brenda.

Brenda says you wait, or you walk round.

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Instant download. Any device. Written under the pen name Rose Adams.