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.
There's an arguably better snap of it on an earlier wander, but at least you get a glimpse of the cool street art on the end of Baynton Road with this one. I still need to walk down Baynton Road, so perhaps I'll save talking about that piece for later...
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.
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.
Apparently this is 34 Baynton Road. Looks like just a tiny, isolated house, stuck in a very odd little corner.
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.
We're just outside my mile radius here, but Osborne Villas Looked too tempting to just walk past.
Looked a bit to me like number 16 had tilted over to the left a bit since it was built...
29 Oct 2020
They're refurbishing (by which they seem to mean ripping almost completely apart and rebuilding) the Catherine in Underfall Yard at the moment. I like checking on the progress when I pass by the Patent Slip.
31 Oct 2020
Starting up close in Hotwells with a few bits around the Cumberland Basin flyover system, I walked to Bedminster and back on Hallowe'en, including finding some excellent decoration work.
I like the way I can sometimes make something that seems pretty out of the less-attractive bits of the Cumberland Road Flyover System
02 Nov 2020
I've taken a lot of photos of Royal York Crescent over the years. This time I walked right to the dead-end bit at the far west corner and found a plaque to the Empress of the French. Call me hard to impress, but among the scientists, novelists, architects and artists whose plaques litter the rest of the area, that seems quite minor claim to fame.
A gated community, apparently. There's a few of these little enclaves in Clifton, often hidden "around the back", as mews always were, I suppose.
03 Nov 2020
A very local exploration today, but there are still bits of the near field that I never need to walk down, so it didn't take me long to find somewhere I haven't been in a decade or more, the little enclave of smaller Victorian houses around Oldfield Road and Sandford Road. I'd really like to live in one of those houses, but I doubt I could afford it.
05 Nov 2020
I spotted the fog and decided to go for a morning walk rather than a lunchtime walk today. It was cold on the Portway, but it was worth it. Most of my One Mile Matt photos are "record shots", but it's nice to get the chance to do something a bit more artistic.
09 Nov 2020
I like The Paragon as a terrace, especially the bowed porches. On the other side of the road, a house attic has a stone lion surrounded by rocaille leaves, according to its listing.
I also love the detail of the arrows in the wrought iron of The Mall's balconies. Today I discovered Westfield place, a road I'd never encountered that runs up to the rear of the Coronation Tap. (It's a famous local cider pub, but I've only been in a couple of times. I'm more of a beer man.)
There's a private garden; from Google Maps it looks like it's mostly around to the right of here, behind a wall. It abutts the back gardens of Prince's Buildings and Windsor Terrace, I think, so might even have a way out onto Prince's Lane, or did have at some point in the past, before everything got quite overgrown back there.
I do like the rebellious scruffy place in among the clean Georgian spledour. My friend Marie-Louise once told me she wanted to live here, I think just because it was obviously a rebel stronghold...
The rain made me think of shelter, and then I remembered the SECRET TUNNEL (which isn't that secret, but if you can't spot the entrance here I won't blame you.)
10 Nov 2020
I went to grab a coffee from Imagine That's little horsebox by the marina, completely forgetting that they don't open on Monday or Tuesday. On the plus side, on the way back I was in time to watch the Plimsoll Bridge swinging for a tidy little yacht.