Tagged: asphalt
Coffee, Coronation and Clift House Road
28 May 2021
Another dash to Greville Smyth Park for a coffee from Rich at Hopper, but at least this time I managed to divert a bit and knock off a small section of Cumberland Road I'd managed to miss on previous excursions. Along the way I muse on a strange residence in between a warehouse and a tannery, and wonder if the Mayor might be deliberately letting the Cumberland Road Flyover area go to seed...
Perched between the C Bond and the Thomas Ware tannery, I've always been curious about this odd residence with its tall mansards and unusual layout. It is, apparently, 8 and 9 Clift House Road. If it wasn't for the big busy route in front it could be in the middle of the countryside, really.
I imagine having that both the road and the tannery—operating since 1840 and still going strong, apparently—rather detracts from property value, but perhaps it's actually owned by the tanners and tenanted by people who are used to the smell anyway...
Another Day, Another 50 Metres
29 May 2021
I met my friends Sarah and Vik at Riverside Garden Centre today; I needed to buy some compost for repotting my wildly-overgrowing aloe vera, and I went a little bit out of my way to knock off a stretch of Ashton Road. It was a pleasant enough walk in the surprisingly warm (and surprising-not-tipping-it-down-on-a-Bank-Holiday-weekend) weather.
Traffic light control box, I assume. It's about as far from home as I am, as Plessey's headquarters were in Ilford, not far from where I grew up. Guessing this might be original gear from the late 1960s, when the flyover system was built.
Interesting mixture. Behind Ashton Road, to the right and behind me in this pic, is Ashton Gate stadium, home to Bristol City, which goes some way to explaining the two big pubs (next two photos) on this stretch.
I managed to knock off a reasonable chunk of the roads I had left to walk around the University at the north-eastern extremity of my mile on this nice sunny walk. As well as being impressed by the number of big townhouses now occupied by various departments, I took some time on my way there to check out a war memorial, and some time on the way back to do a little extra wandering of Berkeley Square.
Bank Holiday Street Art
31 May 2021
A nice warm Bank Holiday Monday saw me walk back over to Bedminster to do justice to something we glimpsed on my last wander. Along the way I spotted a couple of new pieces of street art tucked away on the south side of the Cumberland Basin Flyover system, so this turned into a micro-graffiti walk.
I guess they must be doing something to the Plimsoll Bridge—the door to the pivot mechanism base is behind there, I think.
We'll get to my main reason for coming here in a minute, but for now let's just have a little poke around this semi-industrial, semi-residential alleyway.
I imagine I've seen the stall there at places like the Tobacco Factory Market, but I've got a terrible memory for things like that.
It used to be an Auction Rooms, for both Dreweatts and BCVA, from what I recall. I went to my very first auction there, in fact, back when I had a year of "Artist Dates" in 2013.
I should start doing those again, now we're (hopefully) going to be able to go places more freely again.
I imagine this derelict site would be worth quite a lot. Odd that it's just sitting there mouldering.
A Longer-than-it-looks Walk With Lisa
06 Jun 2021
The track on the map doesn't tell the whole story of this walk with Lisa around and about Clifton, Berkeley Square, Brandon Hill and the harbourside, because the batteries on my GPS ran out while we were on the roof of Trenchard Street car park, it seems. Oh well. I think I did most of the area I was interested in finishing off around the University; there were only a few new bits around Brandon Hill that won't be on the track, and I can easily do them again.
Still, technology woes aside it was a nice walk, albeit a bit warm for climbing all those hills, and sat on the harbourside watching the world go by for a while, too. It was good to see the Bristol Ferry Boats carrying people around again, especially.
This is apparently a "smaller, adaptable studio space" connected with the University's adjacent Wickham Theatre.
"Identified as an Unlisted building of Merit in the St Michael's Hill and Christmas Steps Conservation Area Character Appraisal, January 2009.". It's certainly attractive, clearly old, and feels quite out of place dwarfed by the Uni's modern architecture. Interesting little house.
Again, tempted out of my one-mile radius by the prospect of a new viewpoint. There at the top of the hill is the Red Lodge, where I wanted to go and have a look at the "wigwam" in the back garden. (Spoilers: it's not actually a wigwam.)
I always base my political affiliations on things I've read scrawled on the side of buildings, so I immediately signed up.
A Trip to the Library
08 Jun 2021
I had to return a book to the library—Ellic Howe's Magicians of the Golden Dawn, very interesting, thanks for asking—so I decided to pick the Central Library as my drop-off point and walk down a segment of Deanery Road that I've surprisingly overlooked so far. In any normal time I'd have been walking to work that way quite often, or heading through at the weekend on the way to do some shopping in the city centre, or for a coffee at St Nick's, but those excursions have been quite thin on the ground for the last year or so, for obvious reasons.
I've never been inside a single building on Deanery Road itself; the Library is technically on College Green and the rest is mostly student accommodation or Bristol College buildings, by the looks of things. It's a fairly mediocre street, used merely to get to other places. (St George's Road, which merges into it, at least has the distinction of several good shops verging from the practical and long-lived car radio fitters to the excellent little Dreadnought Books, sadly currently closed for refurbishment...)
After dropping off my book I came home via the harbourside, the better to enjoy the nice sunny blue skies of the day.
The last time we saw this bit of waste ground, I wondered if I was remembering correctly that it used to be a garage. Well, it's now being cleared out, and the skipful of old tyres would seem to be a clue that I was probably right...
Or rather, a bit of St George's Road. At the corner there, St George's Road actually continues down the side street to the left. The road straight ahead, on the far side of the junction, is actually Deanery Road, which is the bit I've not walked yet.
There have been a lot of complaints from locals that there were still hundreds of people coming to the harbourside, but of course nowhere for them to relieve themselves during the Covid lockdowns, given that the Council decided to shut down virtually every public loo in Bristol years go. It looks like they finally made some arrangements.
Leigh Woods Solo
19 Jun 2021
I hadn't really planned to go out for a wander yesterday; I just got the urge and thought "why not?" (Well, the weather forecast was one possible reason, but I managed to avoid the rain, luckily.)
I wanted to finish off the A369—as it turns out I may still have a small section to go, but I've now walked the bulk of it out to my one-mile radius—and also a few random tracks in Leigh Woods. I'm still not really sure that I'm going to walk them all, especially after discovering today that "the map is not the territory" applies even more in the woods, where one of the marked tracks on the map wasn't really that recognisable as a track in real life... I'm glad I'd programmed the route into the GPS in advance!
Anyway. A pleasant enough walk, oddly bookended, photographically at least, by unusual vehicles. Leigh Woods was fairly busy, especially the section I'd chosen, which was positively dripping with teenage schoolkids with rah accents muttering opprobrium about the Duke of Edinburgh. I'm presuming the harsh remarks were more about taking part in his award scheme than the late Consort himself, but I didn't eavesdrop enough to be certain...
I'm not sure what's being delivered to the lock-keepers' house, but it looks like they'll probably all be a lot happier afterwards.
I think it was at this point I decided not to bother walking alongside the road up Rownham Hill and instead divert into Dead Badger's Bottom, which is a prettier alternative. That could be a slogan for this rather mundane strech: "The road up Rownham Hill: less attractive than a dead badger's bottom".
It caught my eye not just because I've been here before—there's a lovely house just up the hill which I think may itself be called Bannerleigh House—but also because the recent University-based wander I went on with Lisa also had a Bannerleigh.
Or that's what is says on the gate, anyway. There are a lot of big posh hidden-behind-big-walls houses in this area.
The name caught my eye because it seems to be one of those words that could either be a beautiful flower or some kind of sexually-transmitted disease. Apparently it's a place in County Donegal. The golf course looks challenging...
This might explain why I've put off this bit of the A369 for so long. It's mostly just a boring road, desgined for cars.
Library, Bookshop, Coffee
03 Jul 2021
I was headed into town to return RA Gilbert's biography of AE Waite to the library and along the way I noticed that Dreadnought had finished their refurbishment, but wouldn't be open until midday. That left me some time to kill, so I bimbled around the old St Augustine's/Gaunt's area for a while, then headed up Park Street for a coffee and a snack to eat on Brandon Hill before heading home the way I'd came so I could pop in and buy a pamphlet on the Hot Well I'd been interested in for a while.
These nearest houses were originally called Chapel Row; they're an extension of the western end of Dowry Square, built 1725-1727. Most of the houses in this area were built from the 1720s onwards as the popularity of the Hot Well caused a demand for lodging space closer than College Green, where people generally stayed before.
Number 262 here, the closest, is presumably owned by the same people who own the little plot of ground that's for sale, given that it's basically at the end of their back garden.
It was called Chapel Row because a chapel used to stand in the middle of this terrace, long before Carrick House was built at the far end.
On the ever-helpful Church Crawler you can see some pictures of the original chapel Dowry Chapel, and its successor, St-Andrew-the-Less. St Andrew (-the-Greater) was of course St Andrew's in Clifton Village.
Pevsner apparently said of St-Andrew-the-Less:
is an unforgiveable crime against the architecture of Dowry Square and chapel Row. Of no value either in its own Gothic forms. The spire is particularly nasty.
Personally, I thought it looked rather nice, but I'm used to Bristol's jumbletechture. It definitely lasted until c. 1963 as there's a picture of it around then (in the background of the devastation wrought by the demolition to clear the way for the Cumberland Basin Flyover System) in Hotwells - Spa to Pantomime.
Though what caught my eye was the barely-visible slogan on the side wall in the middle of the picture: "I DID MY FIRST GRAFFITI HERE WAY TOO LONG AGO".
Anyway. Then I popped along the walkway to return the biography of AE Waite I've just finished, and to discover if the library's reference section had re-opened yet. It hadn't.
A protest was starting to form on College Green on my way past. As well as this one, there was also a Kill the Bill march that closed the M32 followed by "delirious" England fans having a mass celebration in the city centre, so I'm glad I wandered home pretty early. I wouldn't fancy being the Bristol Waste cleaning team as I write this, on Sunday morning...
A dull alley, but an interesting number plate, at least. It's SSS 666; I've just checked on the DVLA website.
And the subtle spoor of a police horse, I imagine, given how many protests and football fan excursions were going on...
This may be the least salubrious bit of the Old City. End of the alleyway behind Toni and Guy, just behind the back of the Greenhouse on Park Street. The most glamorous thing I passed was two hairdressers having a fag.
Speaking of Toni and Guy, I guess the salon used to be a Halifax. Given the glue remnants, it seems a newer plate has fallen off at some point, revealing a bit of history.
I was desperately looking for anything vaguely like a niche and ended up taking some improbable photos of very dull things. You'll be glad to know I binned the rest.
Shops, Hedgehogs and Cows
06 Jul 2021
I really only took the GPS and camera on a "just in case" basis, as I knew I was only going for a coffee in Greville Smyth Park along a well-trodden path this lunchtime. Still, I saw a few new things along the way, so I figured it was worth uploading the handful of photos I took...
Dead centre of this picture is a herd of cows, though I imagine you'd be hard pressed to find them once this picture is shrunk down a bit for the web. They were more obvious to my naked eye, wandering around on the hill. You don't often see cows from town.
I thought that was part of Ashton Court's Red Deer Park, but perhaps they're diversifying...
Of course, in the old days you'd have seen plenty of cattle near here in the city. Just behind the Pump House were the cattle sheds and an abattoir that used to stand where the Rownham Mead housing development is now. You can see them in one of the pictures on the City Docks website, here.
A Cliftonwood Revisit with Lisa
10 Jul 2021
Lisa had a couple of hours to spare before going up in a hot air balloon (exciting!) so we went for a quick local walk, revisiting a bit of Cliftonwood we've seen before, exploring the secret garden I'd visited before that I thought she'd enjoy (I didn't take any new photos there) and then pushing on to another garden, Cherry Garden. Last time we passed this way, I'd noticed the gate, but we hadn't gone in as I'd assumed it was private. I'd since found it on CHIS's list of communal gardens in Clifton, so I wanted to have a look inside this time, and try to figure out whether it was private-communal or public, and possibly Council-owned, like several of the other gardens in Clifton.
Okay, I don't think there have actually been any changes to this plot. I just figured I'd snap a different angle on it before it gets turned into a house.