20 Mar 2021
My friend Lisa was meeting another friend for a walk near the suspension bridge, so we fitted in a quick harbourside loop from my place first. We discussed gardening (we're both envious of the gardening skills of the Pooles Wharf residents; we can just about keep herbs alive, whereas they're growing heartily-fruiting lemon trees outdoors in England along with everything from bonsai to magnolias), cafes, work and architecture, among other things.
It's a floating cider bar, normally moored near Bristol Bridge, hence the name. It seems very small for the dry dock here. They once launched ships so big from here that one of them (MV Dumra) collided with Mardyke Wharf, opposite, with enough force to stave in the harbour wall and buckle the railway lines. Not much danger of that from the Apple, I'd think.
There's no date on the Dumra picture, but [she was completed in 1922, so I think that must bt the year the photo was taken. Unless they had to reel her back in, fix her and re-launch her.
I wasn't going to take a very long walk on this nice spring evening; it just happened. I was going to knock off a path or two on Brandon Hill, home over centuries to hermits and windmills, cannons and Chartists, and then just wander home, stopping only to fill up my milk bottle at the vending machine in the Pump House car park.
However, when I heard a distant gas burner I stayed on the hill long enough to see if I could get a decent photo of both the hot air balloon drifting over with Cabot Tower in the same frame (spoiler: I couldn't. And only having the fixed-focal-length Fuji with me didn't help) and then, on the way home, bumped into my "support bubble", Sarah and Vik, and extended my walk even further do creep carefully down the slipway next to the old paddle steamer landing stage and get some photos from its furthest extreme during a very low tide...