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Tourists take full advantage of Tower Bridge being closed due to technical fault

People have been making the most of a rare opportunity to stand in the middle of London’s Tower Bridge after it was closed to traffic for a second day.

The famous landmark, which got stuck open yesterday, was fixed at around 5.30pm Sunday, giving people a 24-hour period to conduct a once-in-a-decade photo shoot.

Not quite knowing what to do with all the space, tourists and Londoners alike threw themselves into the air with wild abandon as they enjoyed messing around on the crossing that usually hosts up to 21,000 cars a day.

Others went for the classic ‘let’s make it look like we are holding this thing up’ pose as mechanics urgently tried to fix the fault in the bridge’s mechanism which meant it wouldn’t close.



At one point, a couple even turned up in full wedding gear and stopped for a totally heartfelt romantic moment.

Not wanting to miss out, some decided to take pictures of themselves sharing a drink or doing the splits and one woman brought her dog along to join in the fun.

Another man was spotted lying down in the middle of the road, presumably with little faith in the engineers’ ability to get the bridge working again quickly.

Drivers in London were perhaps not quite so giddy at the prospect of another day of traffic delays after the fault caused gridlock in the city.

The famous bridge’s arms lift around 850 times a year and went up for the routine job of letting a ship pass late yesterday afternoon.

But then they refused to come down again for more than an hour, leaving queues on both sides of the divide.

One witness overheard a staff radio saying there had been ‘multiple failures.’

Eventually the faulty arm was put back in its place but only pedestrians and cyclists were allowed to cross for around 24 hours.

City of London Police have now confirmed all vehicles can use it again.

The closure added to the problems for those trying to cross between north and south London. Hammersmith Bridge is totally shut because it’s been found to be structurally unsafe and nearby Wandsworth and Vauxhall bridges are both in the middle of complex repair projects.

Tower Bridge connects the Square Mile financial district to Southwark.

In 2005, police closed the bridge for 10 hours after a technical problem meant the arms could not be lowered.

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