布里斯托尔海峡的伯恩贝克码头，英国滨海韦斯顿北索美塞得 Birnbeck Pier on the Bristol Channel in Weston-super-Mare, England (© Stephen Davies/Adobe Stock)

布里斯托尔海峡的伯恩贝克码头，英国滨海韦斯顿北索美塞得 Birnbeck Pier on the Bristol Channel in Weston-super-Mare, England (© Stephen Davies/Adobe Stock)

End of the pier?

This peaceful but derelict pier, on England’s south-west coast, was a hub of activity back in its heyday. Designed by the famous pier builder Eugenius Birch, Birnbeck Pier – sometimes called the Old Pier – opened in Weston-super-Mare in 1867. Victorian day trippers would arrive on steamships to enjoy fairground rides, a travelling cinema and skating rink. Welsh visitors would turn up to buy a drink in the pier’s bars on a Sunday, a day when the sale of alcohol was banned over the border. You can still see the old lifeboat house and slipway on Birnbeck Island, a reminder of its history as a base for the RNLI. The Bristol Channel has the second highest tidal range in the world and the island offered a good launching point for its lifeboats, which might otherwise have been cut off by mudflats at lower tides.

Birnbeck Pier is the only British pier which connects the mainland to an island, and its light structure, based on 15 groups of iron columns, has helped it weather 150 years of battering by the sea. But the end of paddle steamers in the 1970s, the opening of the Severn Bridge linking England to Wales, the boom in foreign holidays and competition from a rival pier marked the beginning of the end for the Old Pier which finally closed to the public in 1994. The elements have long battered the Grade II listed structure and it was added to Historic England’s at-risk register in 1999. Local campaigners are trying to save it from collapse and the RNLI has expressed an interest in returning to the island if efforts by North Somerset Council to purchase the pier are successful.

码头的尽头？

这座位于英格兰西南海岸的宁静而废弃的码头，在其鼎盛时期曾是一个活动中心。由著名的码头建造商尤金·伯奇（Euginius Birch）设计的Birnbeck码头——有时被称为旧码头——于1867年在威斯顿超级马尔（Weston super Mare）开业。维多利亚时代的一日游者将乘坐汽船抵达，享受游乐场、电影院和溜冰场的乐趣。威尔士游客会在周日出现在码头的酒吧里买饮料，而这一天，边境地区禁止出售酒精饮料。你仍然可以看到Birnbeck岛上的旧救生艇屋和滑道，这让人想起它作为RNLI基地的历史。布里斯托尔海峡拥有世界上第二高的潮差，该岛为其救生艇提供了一个良好的下水点，否则在低潮时可能会被泥滩切断。

Birnbeck码头是英国唯一一个连接大陆和岛屿的码头，其由15组铁柱组成的轻型结构帮助其经受了150年的海水冲击。但是，20世纪70年代桨式轮船的终结、连接英格兰和威尔士的塞文大桥的开通、国外假日的繁荣以及来自竞争对手码头的竞争标志着旧码头的终结开始，该码头最终于1994年对公众关闭。这些元素长期以来一直在破坏二级结构，并于1999年被添加到历史悠久的英格兰风险登记册中。当地活动人士正试图将其从倒塌中拯救出来，如果北萨默塞特委员会成功购买该码头，RNLI已表示有兴趣返回该岛。