WHILE the Queen is in Toulouse, the Duke of Edinburgh will inspect on Wednesday the Millau viaduct, a Britishdesigned motorway spanning the River Tarn in southern France, that is destined to be the highest bridge in the world when completed in December.

The royal visit in a helicopter underlines the British link with one of Europe’s biggest civil engineering projects. Lord Foster of Thames Bank produced the design for the seven-towered toll bridge that will complete the missing link in the motorway between Calais and the central Mediterranean.

Thousands of tourists have admired the 2.6km (1.6-mile) steel road deck as it has been rolled into place 245 metres (804ft) above the Tarn in the south of the Massif Central highlands, north of Montpellier. At their highest point, the concrete and steel towers, which are shaped like tuning forks, soar 1,100ft above the river. That is 100ft higher than the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffage company, which is managing the project, grew out of Gustave Eiffel’s 19th-century firm. Computer techniques and high technology such as Global Position Satellite positioning, have compressed the building time to 3½ years. It is due to be completed a month ahead of its January 1, 2005, schedule.

Up to 15,000 vehicles a day will cross the viaduct, ending France’s most notorious bottleneck. In the summer holiday season, traffic jams of up to 20 miles block the hillside route nationale as it winds down the Tarn valley to Millau. Nevertheless, some residents in the Causses highlands are unhappy about the prospect of traffic thundering over Millau. Environmental campaigners have long opposed the £170 million project. Alongside local campaigners is José Bové, the militant campaigner and scourge of MacDonald’s restaurants, whose farm is outside Millau.

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