Why do Dogs Jump to their Death from this Bridge? | S1E79

Since the fifties, at least 300 dogs have jumped off this bridge. My journey began at North America's most Northern drivable point. After riding through Canada and America, I've crossed over to Europe. From there, I'll make my way across Asia and down to Australia. New Zealand's Southern most drivable point will mark the end of my journey. I'm calling it the big spiral, and this is act four, a lap of Ireland and the United Kingdom. All right, we're off. I'll show you exactly on the map where we're going in a bit, but today we're heading North. Basically the plan is for one, okay, so for one, the Romans got around. So the Romans are obviously where Italy is now today, but they conquered quite, you know, they got around. And so there's actually like some Roman ruins of an old bath house up here in Scotland, which is, you know, it's pretty far away from where, you know, Rome is. Yeah, so we're going to go check that out. Then we're also going to go check out, there's kind of this crazy bridge. There's this really odd bridge. When dogs go on this bridge, they like to jump off the side. It's really odd. And nobody really knows why. And it's something about this bridge or what's around this bridge causes dogs to jump off of it. So we're going to go check that out. You dogs don't go to that bridge. But yeah, in general, we're going to head North. And then I've also made a few changes to the bike that I'll show you. It feels so good to stand up and ride a motorbike. Think we're at the top here. All right, let's have a look at the old map and the things I made, the changes I made to the bike. Maybe we'll start with the changes. All right, so the fan is fixed now. So basically there's a relay here. The relay went bad. So now the fan's working. And then I put like a little, what do you call it? A fender bag on. So this is a giant loop fender bag. I have to put it quite a bit out here because all of my fairings are kind of poking out a bit but it seems to be working okay. So I put my first aid kit in there. So it's quick access in case something happens. All right, let's have a look at the map. All right, so here's our map of Scotland. It just came from Largs and we're just heading up inland a little bit here. The Roman ruins are somewhere here and the bridge that the dogs like to jump off is somewhere here. And then eventually I want to make my way up to Inverness. So I don't know exactly how I'm going to do it but this is all mountainous terrain here. So I'm going to try and find the most interesting way to do it. But I do know that I do want to see Loch Ness. All right, so let's talk about Loch Ness. So I guess the first thing is in the UK, a loch is basically a lake. In North America, we call them a lake, here they call them lochs. And Loch Ness is famous for the Loch Ness monster. It's a bit like Bigfoot, Sasquatch, that kind of thing. Basically a photograph was taken at Loch Ness and it appears to show some kind of dinosaur type thing living in the water. And it's just become kind of a legend that the Loch Ness monster is living in Loch Ness. They also call the monster Nessie, but of course it's named after Loch Ness. Well, anyways, there's a town down there. All right, somewhere around here is these Roman ruins. Oh yeah, I just parked over here. So we're at kind of the most Northern point that the Roman empire spread. And that's because there's a place here called the Antonine house. And there was an Antonine wall that they built basically across Scotland. Oh, I gotta open this gate. So they built this Antonine wall across Scotland and along this wall, they built various things. So here we have a Roman bath house all the way in Scotland. So here you can actually see like a diagram of how it'll look. So here's the cold bath and there it is right there. And actually the upper half is kind of disappeared, which would have been all this, but all the lower half is still there. So it's kind of amazing, especially to a North American that in the middle of this apartment complex are Roman ruins. Actually, everything is kind of labeled here. The cold room, frigidarium, which is that, yeah. Oh, and that's actually, no, that's the hot room. So I'm standing in the cold room, wow. Yeah, I'm gonna go sit in the cold bath for a second here. So this place was kind of active until 140 AD until the Romans left. And when they left, they kind of destroyed the whole thing. But obviously, yeah, there's still a lot of ruins here. It looks like some of it's been concreted maybe, maybe in modern times. I'm not sure if the Romans had concrete, but right now I'm sitting somewhere where a Roman was sitting, what is it, basically 2000 years ago. So it's kind of cool. In the middle of this housing complex. Yeah, so the first warm room, the floor was laid on pillars to allow the hot air to circulate below. Yeah, so that would be, basically that's why that's all hollowed out, I guess. There used to be a floor on top of that. They basically had an HVAC system and the floor temperatures would reach 40 Celsius and then the air temperatures, well, maybe not quite 40, but it would be hot enough to make the Romans sweat. So, oh yeah, so they even had hot air circulating behind these stones here. Presumably the Romans were very much used to a warmer climate and up here, it's not quite as warm. So yeah, it must've been a pretty popular place. Sun's out, guns out, not quite. Susie, Susie passed away. Overton House and Estate. So this is where the bridge is. It's actually called the Overton Bridge. Wow, look at that. So that must be the bridge right there. All right, so this is the Overton Bridge or what it's sometimes called the Dog Suicide Bridge. I don't think the dogs are actually trying to commit suicide. It's just, I think they must get confused about what the bridge is like. Oh yeah, it's pretty, pretty big fall. So the story is, is that since the fifties, at least 300 dogs have jumped off this bridge. And of those dogs, 50 of them have passed away. People, people don't know why really. And there've been a few theories, some paranormal, but in that big mansion over there, apparently there's a, they call her the Lady in White. And apparently she had a love for dogs or something and, and she's, she's kind of spooking them to jump off the bridge. So this is the paranormal theory. Then there's the theory that there's mink. There's mink and dogs are very attracted to the scent of mink. And the idea is that on clear, bright, dry days, dogs can really smell them. And all of a sudden they smell and then they just start running for it. And then they just jump off the bridge. Only problem with that theory is that apparently there are no mink here. So that kind of puts that out of the, out of the running. So what else could it be then? Well, it might be the shape of the bridge. So the idea is that possibly the dogs don't really understand that this is a wall and they think they can just jump onto this ledge or something, but often they'll just jump right over. They won't even land on top of the ledge. Another theory that has to do with how dogs perceive the bridge is that there's lots of foliage growing up past the height of the bridge. So from the dog's perspective, they may see all this, these trees coming up past the bridge and assume that, well, there might be ground on the other side of the wall. Well, it's not quite true, but yeah, it's kind of an unsolved mystery. I know I've seen a lot of locals walking their dogs over this bridge already, and they're not concerned about it at all. Yeah, maybe, maybe they come here often and kind of know the dog's fine here, but it seems like sometimes the dogs just get really agitated and then jump off. So I have no idea, but anyways, maybe we should get going. All right. Well, there's a surprising number of dogs around the suicide dog bridge. My hotel, Luck Long. Well, it was good to ride the bike again. It had actually been a couple of weeks since the last time I rode. I was a bit surprised by the Roman ruins. I thought they were going to be, because in the pictures they looked really just like there's barely anything there, but there's actually a lot more there than I thought. And yeah, it was actually pretty cool. And the bridge, well, it's, it's a pretty cool Victorian era bridge. It's pretty interesting in itself, but it's a bridge. So it's just, it's more of the story behind it that kind of makes the whole thing interesting. But yeah, then you see all these people walking across the bridge with their dogs and stuff. I'm like, hmm, I wonder how true this is and how much of it's kind of, you know, local lore and stuff like that. But anyways, it's still kind of fun to kind of ponder this crazy bridge. And it's kind of nice. It's right at the end of the ride today. We were in the mountains and I think we're going to get more mountains tomorrow. And yeah, hopefully eventually get to Loch Ness. And then I think that the ultimate destination is to be somewhere around Inverness. So I wonder if there's something going on with the Ness thing, but, but anyways, I hope you enjoyed the video. And if you'd like to, I'd love for you to subscribe down below. But anyways, I'll see you the next time.