Tagged: city
Clifton Village Mini Wander
20 Nov 2020
Just a quick wander up the hill to get a flat white from Twelve. I really enjoyed the spooky mannequin (?) in the window.
This frontage on Queens Road, just down from where Twentiety Century Flicks used to be housed, has always looked run-down, and it's only getting worse.
I mentioned to Christopher Fowler that I'd always thought this pub sign would be a good murder weapon for one of the Bryant and May books, but of course he mostly deals in London, not Bristol.
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.
And Back Down the Hill from the Flu Jab
21 Nov 2020
This is my return from getting my annual flu jab at Christ Church, as explained in more detail in my wander up the hill.
I don't think this is exactly a public right of way. But I started so I tried to finish without getting the police called on me by worried residents
I do love this terrace. The mansard roofs, the grand central house, the ornamentation, the porches. It's all rather grand.
encaustic | ɛnˈkɔːstɪk |
adjective
(in painting and ceramics) decorated by burning in colours as an inlay, especially using coloured clays or pigments mixed with hot wax.
It's a great name for a shop and a striking colour to boot. Excellent marketing, and closer to me than my traditional haunt of Kitchens Cookshop at the top of Whiteladies Road. Maybe the next time I need a utensil I'll give them a try. I think the young woman in the shop spotted me taking the snap.
For some reason I'm reminded of the time I was browsing the sadly-now-gone Avon Books (which used to occupy 4a Waterloo Street, next to Kitchen Artillery, which occupies 4b) and found that all the books on subjects like this were collected into a section labelled "Mumbo Jumbo"
Up for the flu jab
21 Nov 2020
A trip up the hill to get my winter flu jab. I'm not sure I really needed it this year, what with avoiding Covid—I haven't had so much as a sniffle in more than a year—but seeing as they offered... Instead of the doctor's surgery on Pembroke Road, they'd taken over Christ Church, presumably to give more room and ventilation for the necessary social distancing at the moment. As usual, it was their typically efficient operation, and I was in and out in about three minutes.
On the way there and back I snapped as much as I could, but I wanted to be home in time for the first online Times Crossword Championship. As it turned out, I needn't have bothered, as the technology at the Times couldn't keep up with the demand from competitors, and their system just collapsed under the weight of page-views. They tried again the day after, and it collapsed just as badly. Maybe next year...
This wander is split into two parts, as I turned my tech off to go into Christ Church for my jab. The walk home can be found over here.
This was meant to be the day of the first online Times Cryptic Crossword Championship. Sadly the Times's web servers let them down, so the event was a washout, and I dashed back from my flu jab to take part for no good reason, as it turned out.
The destination for my wander today. My doctor's surgery branched out into Christ Church to give them more room for socially-distanced administering of the flu jab. Fast and efficient as usual.
Avoiding the Accounts
26 Nov 2020
I took the day off my day job to do my accounts—or at least do enough bookkeeping to send them to my accountant. I hate doing the books. I woke up late, tired and with a headache and decided to bunk off for a walk around Cliftonwood, Clifton Village and Clifton instead, taking in a couple of good coffees along the way. Thanks, Foliage Café, and Twelve for the flat whites.
From what I've worked out so far, the use of St Vincent's name around so much of Bristol, especially Hotwells and Clifton, dervies from the ancient hermitage and chapel dedicated to St Vincent of Saragossa, which (possibly) was in Ghyston’s Cave, the cave in the rock face now accessible through a tunnel from the observatory, but at the time only by a perilous cliff climb (which I can only presume is what made it so appropriate for a hermitage.)
Why St Vincent of Saragossa? Anthony Adolph says:
It should be explained that the connection of Bristol with the Iberian wine trade led, in the Middle Ages, to Bristol’s importing of the cult of Lisbon’s patron saint, Vincent.
I have done very little real research on this so far, though, so don't take my word for any of it. I am not a historian, etc.
The Hillsborough Flats are a lot prettier from the back than their frontage on the Hotwell Road suggests, I think.
More Cliftonwood
05 Dec 2020
Back to Cliftonwood for a wander that included some of the belle views of Bellevue Crescent and other bits of the easternmost part. Highlights included watching someone bump-starting an elderly Nissan Micra in the narrow confines of Bellevue Crescent.
I used to live down there, at 34 Portland Court, overlooking the marina. I wasn't paying the rent, mind you.
The Gridiron and Bower Ashton Part Two
03 Dec 2021
On my last wander, to Bower Ashton, I was intending to knock Blackmoors Lane off my list "to-do" list, but got a bit diverted. I also took a little look into the history of the Gridiron, once a cheaper alternative to dry dock that was nestled just south of North Entrance Lock.
Today I had to go to send a parcel off somewhere, so I decided on going to the North Street Post Office via Blackmoors Lane. I didn't have much intention of anything else, but as luck would have it I walked out both at low tide and also as some lockkeepers seemed to be having a bit of a training session, and one of the more senior people was (a) happy to answer a few random questions on the Gridiron and (b) actually knew a lot about it, as Gridiron maintenance had been one of his jobs, more than twenty years ago...
If you look at the lock wall, about halfway between the lock gates and the inset ladder, you'll see a little square hole. I had no idea what it was for until today, and I had no idea I was going to find out...
The delights of the Bower Ashton roundabout. Here's a picture of it under construction in the 1960s from the Bristol Archives. Don't tell me I don't know how to show you a good time.
As usual around here, I want to go that way but there's no crossing and no pavement, so we'll head back through this little green and head for that bridge you can see that spans the left-hand lane here.
I've snapped this before; it just looked particularly attractive today. Al's Tikka Grill has some rave reviews on TripAdvisor. Maybe I'll give it a try one day.
This isn't so much of a photo as a reminder to talk about the amazing malty smell that wafts out and inhabits this whole stretch of North Street when there's some brewing going on. Presumably it's the days when they're boiling wort.
I skipped the photography for the part of the wander where I went to the Post Office on North Street to send my old phone back to Apple for some trade-in, so here we are back at the end of Spike Island, heading back toward Hotwells.
If you recall, before I left this area on the outbound leg of the wander, I had a chat with one of the more senior lockkeepers. He told me that the gridiron was definitely still there, and, look—there at the far left-hand side. What's that poking out of the silt?
I mostly went out to hang out with my friends Sarah and Vik in Bedminster, but along the way I thought I'd take a closer look at something a little nearer home: the last crossing point of the Rownham Ferry.
A sign of the times: all the new build homes of Balfour Road have solar panels on top. I bet they're grateful of that, given the current energy price crisis.
It's interesting to be able to look pretty much a mile back and see the familiar buildings of home. Descending from the top right in the distance we can just see the Observatory on Observatory Hill, then the end of Royal York Crescent, then the Paragon just eclipsing the suspension bridge, then below the bridge on the left there's Windsor Terrace and the more modern Windsor Court flats just visible behind the Bedminster foreground.
Getting back to the Rownham Ferry, the Ashton Avenue Bridge is one of the reasons it was closed. On the excellent Bristol City Docks website you can find a photo called "Rownham Ferry c1906 with Ashton Avenue Bridge nearly built.".
As you'll see in that photo, at low tide the Rownham Ferry was basically just a bridge made out of boats, so it probably still seemed a quick shortcut compared to walking all the way to Ashton Avenue Bridge. I imagine the foot traffic gradually migrated to the new bridge as the ferry was a more daunting prospect at high tide, from what I can gather. Also, the combined road/rail bridge would have allowed people to get the train across the river, rather than stopping at Clifton Bridge Station and using the ferry, I think.
