High winds that closed the Orwell Bridge three times in January caused gridlocked roads in Ipswich. Don Black puts the situation into an ancient and modern context.

Dictionaries will surely be amended to give the word windage an extra meaning.

At present, in addition to military projectile applications, it's the nautical term for 'the exposed part of the hull of a vessel responsible for wind resistance.'

These days the windage can overturn container lorries as well as ships. Hence, closure of the Orwell Bridge for safety's sake. But it's suggested that that cars can cross when unsafe for high-sided vehicles.

No expense was spared (£23.6 million) to make the mile-long bridge as safe as is humanly possible, yet it was built to be toll-free and has stayed so. We ought to be thankful for not-such-small mercies.

Clifford Smith, first chief executive of a united Suffolk, points out that the cost for what has become an icon of the county was favourable from the taxpayers' view.

'Tendering was open to all Europe for the first time for a regional project of this magnitude,' he recalls. 'With hindsight, the successful Dutch contractors realised that their bid had been far too low.

'I have never heard criticism about the design of the bridge, although people are sorry that the solid parapets prevent them from enjoying a good view of the estuary.

'These make a partial windbreak and also mean that car drivers aren't distracted by the view.'

For a comparison with present-day prices, Boris Johnson's proposed 0.22-mile Garden Bridge across the Thames has already cost £46 million of public money, without even being built.

Goodness knows how much his suggested 22-mile bridge across the English Channel would cost. It would in any case be a major hazard in the world's busiest shipping lanes.

An example of this danger, and of possible consequences of cutting corners on costs, happened nearly 40 years ago.

Sweden, a vast island-bordered country with a small population, felt the need to keep to tight budgets in an extensive bridge-building programme.

But Swedish car exports through Felixstowe came to a temporary halt through disaster in the early hours of January 18, 1980.

A ship collided with a bridge carrying traffic from the mainland to Tjorn island, where a new port, Wallhamn, had been developed to compete with Gothenburg.

The bridge collapsed, but 40 minutes elapsed before the road was closed. In the meantime eight lorry driver plunged to their deaths in the icy water.

Such a mishap had not been foreseen. Columns supporting the road rising straight up from the fjord without protective 'island' bulwarks. The bridge had cost just £3 million in1956, when Swedish construction costs were higher than British.

But designs for the future Orwell bridge and had included these vital bulwarks from the start.

The King of Sweden officially opened the new Tjorn bridge in November 1981; the Orwell Bridge opened in December 1982.

Roto Line, which had linked Wallhamn with Felixstowe with roll-on roll-off cargo ferries, eventually ended through failure of a shipyard in the same group.

Better-known companies that combined passenger services with ro-ro capability have given way at Felixstowe to the far less romantic concept of containers.

The commercial argument can be summarised: containers aren't fussy like human beings or find it easier to go by air – and steel boxes keep coming in large numbers through the whole year.

An unintentional consequence of the Orwell Bridge was that it helped speed foreign travellers away from tourist attractions of Suffolk to the honeypots of London and places such as Stratford-on-Avon.

The best we could hope for from south-bound arrivals was that they would be persuaded by signs on the A12 to visit John Constable's Flatford or Roman Colchester.

Place names in that direction give us a clue to historic snags of getting into and through Essex. Stratford St Mary on the Stour, Chelmsford on the Chelmer, for example, had no bridges.

Splashing one's way through swollen rivers and dense forest that then covered much of Essex explain why many people travelled between London and Ipswich by sailing ship.

Fenland marshes weren't such a barrier to the west. That way you could cross rivers dry foot, as at Moulton near Newmarket.

There the medieval packhorse bridge survives in its entirety, though the Kennet stream normally running below now dries out in the summer.

The height of its parapets would have allowed freight packs plenty of room to swing from side to side. It's the sort of consideration that influences designers of roads for container traffic.

Not long after following the A14 into Cambridgeshire we see evidence that there they're getting lots more money for highway improvements.

Credit for this is claimed by James Palmer, Mayor of Cambridgehshire and Peterborough, who wants Norfolk and Suffolk to join his territory in one devolved East Anglian authority.

Not wanting to go into arguments for and against, I end with an undisputed fact: Cambridge is unique in having the only bridge built into the name of a shire.

Unlike the colleges its present successor, Magdalen Bridge, is not much to look at. In that respect the Orwell Bridge wins hands down.