22 May 2021
I didn't even think I'd manage to get out today, such was the weather forecast. As it turned out, it's been quite a nice day, and I managed to nip up to Clifton Village to pop to the Post Office. As with my last outing, I decided after snapping one shop-front on Regent Street that I might as well snap the whole row, and muse on a few of them, the only service I really offer over and above Google Street View for a lot of my pictures ๐
I have literally no idea what a "conscious apparel eco-fitness studio" is. It used to be Design Flooring, where I bought the oak flooring for my living room, a long time ago. It's lasted well.
The other two shops give an idea of the high concentration of hair salons in Clifton Village in general. I have little need of such establishments.
Carbon footprints, that is: it's not a children's shoe shop; it's one of those places that'll sell you seeds and cereal and whatnot by the scoopload to save on plastic packaging. Scoopaway on Gloucester Road is probably the best-known example in Bristol.
I should really try this place at some point. The only Sushi place I've tried in Clifton Village is Noa, which was excellent.
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 tanneryโoperating since 1840 and still going strong, apparentlyโrather detracts from property value, but perhaps it's actually owned by the tanners and tenanted by people who are used to the smell anyway...
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.
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.
08 Jun 2021
I had to return a book to the libraryโEllic Howe's Magicians of the Golden Dawn, very interesting, thanks for askingโso 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.
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 A369โas 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 radiusโand 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...
There's something about a slightly brassy classic car that makes we want to turn up the Lightroom sliders a bit too high.
I love the individual wipers on each of the lights. Anyway. This was the last photo, mostly because I've walked the route from this point to home hundreds of times after walks in Leigh Woods, and nothing new really triggered my mind's photograph sensor along the way this time.
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.
A dull alley, but an interesting number plate, at least. It's SSS 666; I've just checked on the DVLA website.
I wouldn't suggest following that link if you're at work, say, or if you don't know what OnlyFans is1. Maybe read the Wikipedia article instead.
1 If you type "onlyf" into my browser it autocompletes to the Only Fools and Horses wiki, which probably shows you how old and out of touch I am.
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...
13 Jul 2021
A snappy little trip up the Zig Zag to the shops. It's a steep old route, the Zig Zag, going from just over river level to about the height of the suspension bridge (101 metres) in a compact switchback of a footpath.
I was too busy struggling to breathe to take many snaps of the actual Zig Zag (I've been trying to make it up all the way without stopping the last few times, but I've not quite managed it yet). I did at least take a few snaps either side on this quick lunchtime jaunt to fetch coffee (Coffee #1) and a sarnie (Parsons) from Clifton Village...
But I don't think it's the original end -- if you check this picture from a history pamphlet I posted on Twitter you'll see that it looks like the Colonnade used to curve around rather more, and there's an even better view on this drawing from the British Library collection of Hotwell Parade. Looking at the historic basemap layers there on KYP it certainly seems like sometime between 1855 and 1874 (both Ashmead maps) the first couple of houses in the terrace were lopped off, leaving only numbers 3, 4, 5 and 6. I imagine they were shaved off at the same time as the second Hot Well House was demolished, which was in 1867. It used to stand on Hotwell Point, sticking out into the river, and the whole lot was removed to ease navigation.
I've never actually looked at the Colonnade door numbers to see if they're still like thatโI'll try to remember the next time I pass.
14 Jul 2021
As it turned out, I didn't manage to get a coffee on my lunchtime coffee trip, as Imagine That were briefly shut down by a Covid-19 exposure notification (false alarm, it seems.) On the plus side, my trip was made worthwhile by spotting a couple of people from the University of Bath Mechanical Engineering Department testing an autonomous body-finding catamaran, which isn't a phrase I was ever expecting to write...