My friend Sarah mentioned the high tide and I managed to drag myself out early, though still a little late. We nearly drowned in torrential rain, but the weather changed quickly and we ended up walking over to Bedminster in sunshine.
Someone told me this meant "the young duck", but I can't confirm that. "de jonge eide" would apparently mean "the young egg" in Dutch, but Google Translate just says "the young iede" if I try to translate the name with the spelling "iede" that's on the sign, so maybe it's not Dutch. ("duck" in Dutch would apparently be "eend").
I know "eider" (as in the eider duck/eiderdown) comes from Swedish, but I don't think it's Swedish, either. I'm not very good with languages, that's for sure.
Apparently it's a Chinese copy of the Yamaha Virago. Didn't think I'd heard the name before; it seems they're pretty rare over here.
I do love the frequent glimpses into the distance you get wandering around Bedminster and Southville. Here you can sop the spire of Christ Church in Clifton Village, up behind the colourful Cliftonwood terraces
A walk back from Bedminster to my place, mostly down Duckmoor Road, which I found a little dull—probably because it reminded me a little of the suburbs I grew up in on the outskirts of London—then held up slightly by some filming on Ashton Avenue Bridge. They were trying not to let the crowds build up too much in between takes, it seems, so it wasn't a long delay.
A quick lunchtime jaunt to Dowry Square, which is very close to me but, being effectively a cul-de-sac as well as a square, I've probably only circumnavigated a couple of times in the last couple of decades.
A fruitless wander, as Spoke and Stringer (who I thought might do a decent flat white) were closed, and the only other harbourside inlet offering were a bit too busy to wait at, especially as I'd spent some time wandering some of the convolutions of Rownham Mead. This last congeries of dull alleyways and brown-painted garages was at least somewhere I've never been before, in parts.
I like this piece. It reminds me of a friend.I should probably try to get a pic of it without a car parked in front. I particularly like the way that along with the more wholesome stuff there's also a drone pizza delivery going on! Apparently that's part of the original art from Silent Hobo rather than a commentary addition by a later artist.
I think it was a quite well-used commercial garage and MOT centre, but as usual I may be being an unreliable narrator.
In which our intrepid hero levels up.
The other way to get to Greville Smyth more quickly from there would be to go up that set of steps, but it would mean vaulting the railings, and I don't really do vaulting.
A sunny day, and though I should have probably headed for less well-travelled territory I just headed over to the Marina to grab a flat white from Imagine That's horsebox café.
Just a quick wander up the hill to get a flat white from Twelve. I really enjoyed the spooky mannequin (?) in the window.
A rather more wide-ranging weekend wander with Sarah and Vik, taking in some mock Tudor bits of Bedmo (I should note that I've subsequently been corrected to "Bemmie", but I'm an outsider and have been calling it "Bedmo" for short for decades...), a chunk of Ashton, a path up Rownham Hill called Dead Badger's Bottom(!), The Ashton Court estate, a bit of the UWE campus at Bower Ashton, and some of the Festival Way path.
I wonder if there's a single one of these left in the world that's not been turned into some kind of mobile cafe?
I have no idea how anyone managed to smack this street furniture so hard, or what direction they came from to do it. It's a pretty straight 30mph road right there, and this is only one side of the dual carriageway. Never seen so much as a near-miss there.
This is my return from getting my annual flu jab at Christ Church, as explained in more detail in my wander up the hill.