What happened to '£335 billion' bridge that would connect Northern Ireland to Scotland

Anyone remember the plans to create a bridge connecting Northern Ireland and Scotland together? Well, here's what happened to those plans and why it was scrapped.

Being an island nation often has it setbacks. Long gone are the days when being cut adrift from the rest of the continent was a useful deterrent against invasions, with the sea often serving as more of a hinderance than a help these days.

Clearly the UK Government has long thought the same, with research into the prospect of connecting the two British Isles together being released in 2021.

Projects such as the Øresund Bridge were a huge success. (Getty Stock Images)

How would a land bridge work?

Creating a bridge between Great Britain and the island of Ireland isn't a relatively new idea, in fact plans to connect the two landmasses spans back to the Victorian Era.

More recently, the project was revived by Professor Alan Dunlop at the University of Liverpool back in 2018. After all, connecting Dover to Calais via the Channel Tunnel has proven to be a huge success since completion in 1994, so why not link up Britain and its next closest neighbour?

Land bridges also exist between several other countries on the continent, with the most famous of these being the Øresund Bridge linking Sweden and Denmark.

What are the prospective routes for a bridge?

Two routes were suggested for connecting Northern Ireland and Scotland together.

The plan was to link between the two closest parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland. (Getty Stock Images)

The first was the 'Galloway route', which would connect the village of Portpatrick, Dumfries and Galloway to Larne, County Antrim. The distance between the cities would be around 28 miles (45 km).

The second of the two routes was the Kintyre route, which spanned from the highland peninsula of Kintyre with the North Eastern point of County Antrim. Though shorter than the Galloway route, 12 miles (20 km), there would be three extra hours to get to the bridge on the Scottish side.

There was also two further routes - the Irish Mail route and the Tuskar route - which linked Wales and the Republic of Ireland.

Why were the plans ultimately scrapped?

Like all grand projects thought up under the Boris Johnson era - who remember's London's infamous Garden Bridge - the Northern Ireland to Scotland connection was scrapped due to lack of funds.

A full feasibility study on the prospect of a land bridge revealed it would cost a staggering total of £335 billion, while an underwater tunnel would be slightly cheaper at £209 billion.

There is also the issue of the Beaufort's Dyke trench, which contains a large deposit of WW2 munitions dump.

Portpatrick, Scotland, one of the proposed locations for a Scotland-Northern Ireland bridge. (Getty Stock Images)

Sir Peter Hendy would later conclude that a connection was not viable at the current time but could become an option in the future.

Maybe one day a bridge between the two Isles will manifest, but for now we'll just have to settle for the ferry or air travel to get across.