Pont de Saint-Maurice, Steel bridge in Guidel, France.
Pont Saint-Maurice is a steel bridge over the Laïta linking Guidel in Morbihan with Clohars-Carnoët in Finistère. Its deck has a pale grey top surface and a green underside, with a green metal railing on posts along the edge. The deck rests on thick light grey concrete pillars, each topped by a wider cap.
Ferries at Pouldu and Saint-Maurice carried people across the Laïta from the Middle Ages until 1954, when the bridge was built. A bridge was first approved in 1838, but Guidel's clergy opposed it and Finistère and Morbihan councils blocked each other for decades; the principle was only adopted in 1929 and 1930. During World War II the German occupier built a wooden bridge over the Île Saint-Maurice, destroyed in 1944.
The bridge takes its name from the hamlet of Saint-Maurice and its abbey on the Clohars-Carnoët bank, the crossing point of the old ferry. Since 2004 a summer and weekend ferry has run again at Le Pouldu, funded by Lorient Agglomération and the Pays de Quimperlé community of communes, keeping the river-crossing habit alive alongside the bridge.
The bridge carries the road between Guidel in Morbihan and Clohars-Carnoët in Finistère, so it is the only crossing of the Laïta downstream of Quimperlé. The deck is edged by a green metal railing on posts, with a pale grey surface underfoot. At low tide the water below the concrete pillars drops away, exposing the riverbed where the remains of the German wooden bridge of 1944 can be seen.
During World War II, German forces built a temporary wooden bridge at this location, and traces of it remain visible in the river at low tide. These remnants offer a tangible reminder of a lesser-known chapter in the local wartime story.
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