Recently, I enjoyed a tranquil walk with my son and his girlfriend followed by lunch at a riverside restaurant in the lovely town of Otley. Afterwards, I went back to my car across the bridge spanning the Wharfe that links the north and south sides of the town.

A bridge has existed at this point on the river since around 1228 when it is said the then Archbishop of York, Walter de Gray, who also had the title Lord of the Manor of Otley, commissioned a crossing to enable him to get back to York more easily when travelling from the west. The bridge has had a couple of substantial rebuilds over the centuries, and in 1957, a pedestrian walkway was added to the eastern side.

It was this walkway that I was crossing when I noticed that there were dozens of padlocks attached to the metal railings facing the river. It made me wonder why people do this, and how long the tradition has been going on, if it is indeed classed as a tradition.

The idea is that a courting couple meet on the bridge and declare their everlasting love by fixing a padlock on to the bridge and throwing the key into the waters below ensuring the lock can never be undone.

The origins of love locks are not clear, and and it is up to you to decide which story you believe. One tale comes from China and involves the daughter of a wealthy man who falls in love with a poor boy. Her father forbids the relationship and forces her to become engaged to another rich man. On her wedding day, she runs away with her peasant lover and the couple flee to Mount Huangshan, or Yellow Mountain, and together leap from its heights to their deaths. And now, modern lovers mark the spot by securing padlocks to the railings there.

Another commonly repeated tale is of two Serbian lovers called Relja and Nada who used to meet each other on a bridge in their home town of Vrnjacka Banja. At the outbreak of World War I, Ralja was sent to defend his country, and was killed. From then on, women from the town bought padlocks and attached them to the bridge in the hope that their beloveds would return safely and their love would not be broken in the same way. A variation on that tale is slightly less romantic, in which Relja is posted to Greece where he falls in love with another woman and never comes back. Perhaps then the women of Vrnjacka Banja, fearing the same fate might befall them while their husbands and boyfriends were away for the war, placed the padlocks on the bridge as a superstitious gesture to secure their love’s return.

It is likely that these stories are just that, stories, and have little basis in reality. What we do know, though, is that the ‘tradition’ was popularised relatively recently by a 2006 Italian teen novel by Federico Moccia called ‘I Want You’ in which a couple fix a lock to a lamppost on the Milvian Bridge in Rome and toss the key into the River Tiber to signify their unbreakable love. The best-selling novel was turned into a film starring a popular Italian heartthrob, and soon swarms of infatuated youths began turning up to do the same thing. The bridge, which was built in 207BC and survived military invasions and centuries of heavy traffic, was no match for passionate padlock-wielding teens. The weight of the extra metal caused the lamppost to topple and by 2012, the padlocks had been permanently removed. Locals became so fed up with the damage being caused to the historic monument that police were deployed to guard it.

A similar fate befell the Pont des Arts in Paris, which from 2008 became a hotspot for love-struck couples after the film came out in France. By 2015, around one million locks had been placed onto the bridge adding an extra 45 tonnes of weight causing part of it to collapse. The locks were removed and the practice banned.

There are hundreds of ‘bridges of love’ around the world, where couples are still permitted to attach their tokens of affection. I wonder if Otley Bridge will ever be toppled by the weight of the locks of love?

Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Contact me via my webpage at countrymansdaughter.com, or email gazette@gazetteherald.co.uk.