Tagged: clifton
Lunchtime Reproduction (of an old photo...)
17 Jan 2022
This was basically the quick lunchtime jaunt I tried to do at the beginning of January, only this time I actually managed to get to roughly the viewpoint I'd been hoping for to recreate a historical photo of the Bristol International Exhibition.
I did this walk about a month ago, but I've been a bit poorly and not really up to doing much in my spare time, and it's taken me this long to even face processing even these few photos. Hopefully normal service will be resumed at some point and I can carry on trying to walk any roads and paths that I need to do to make this project feel complete...
Gargoyles? Caryatids? Gargyatids? Caryoyles? There's probably a proper name for them, knowing architecture...
This is St Vincent's Priory, a very odd building on Clifton Hill. According to Maurice Fells' excellent Clifton: History You Can See:
Its name conjures up visions to the sounds of monastic of an ancient religious foundation with its hallowed walls echoing chanting. But St Vincent's Priory is a private house and the likelihood is that it was built as such and probably conceived as an architectural folly...
We've been as far as we can go down there on an earlier wander. From the top you'd just think it led to the Hotel car park.
From Bristol's Lost City, by Clive Burlton, available from Bristol Books; photograph from the author's own collection.
(And extra credit goes to my parents for buying me the book for my birthday! Thanks!)
The Bristol International Exhibition site, presumably around 1914 or not long after. You can see the Rownham Ferry in use, too. I still find it pretty amazing that there used to be a busy ferry and a significant railway station on this little scrap of land that I just used to know as the grassy bit at the start of the towpath, let alone a replica of Bristol Castle!
Unlike my last attempt I successfully managed to get somewhere near the vantage point of the historic photo this time...
I should probably have tried to get it at high tide to make it a bit more comparable, but you can't have everything.
You can see the White City Allotments—those glints of light toward the middle are mostly reflections from greenhouses—where the "White City" of the Exhibition used to stand. There's still a glimpse or two of the railway line to Portishead to be seen, too, along with a vestige of the Rownham Ferry slipway.
Mostly though it's the modern things that stand out—the long line of flats along Paxton Drive, the curve of Brunel Way across the river, and the roof of Ashton Gate Stadium...
The Colonnade, the Rock House, St Vincent's Parade and the old landing stages for Campbell's paddle steamers. The leftover fruit of bygone boom years.
Lunchtime Cliftonwood Wander
18 Jan 2022
Another workday, another quick lunchtime trip to get me out of the house. This time my flimsy pretext is a tiny bit of Clifton Vale Close that I'd apparently not walked, and the fact that although I'd walked down Church Lane at least once before I still hadn't taken a single photo of it. Really I just fancied a mosey through Cliftonwood in the sunshine, with the promise of a coffee from Clifton Village at the top of the hill.
Or a bit of it, anyway. Getting back into the spirit of this project a bit by knocking off the odd end of a road that I'd noticed wasn't filled in on the map yet.
As modern flats go, these seem pleasant enough, and some of them will have amazing views. The don't seem terribly inspiring inside, from what I've seen of Rightmove pictures, but they certainly could be worse.
We've popped down here before, on the site of the Clifton National School that didn't survive bombing in the war.
Today, the modern flats look to me as I imagine their original models would have done back when they were still just an idea on an architect's table (or more likely computer monitor, I suppose.)
I used to live down there, in the block on this end, Portland Court. I recently found a photograph by the late local photographer George Gallop (he had a place on the Hotwell Road) of these Baltic Wharf flats being built, taken from a similar vantage point.
The spire of St Mary Redcliffe, just left of centre on the horizon, is about the same location as the office I work in, at least a few days a week. I took the job half on the basis of the location meaning a lovely commute down one side or other of the harbour. And then a week after I started the first Covid-19 lockdown kicked in and I didn't get to do the commute again for many months.
I really do like these little houses. Hate to think how much you'd have to pay for them, though.
Ouch. Just looked it up. Apparently the average property sale price over the last year was £750,000. I suppose the Tesla parked to the left there should have given away the income level; the Model S sells for about £75,000 in the UK.
This is the road I didn't have many (or any) snaps of that inspired my route today, not that I need much of an excuse to traipse around Cliftonwood on a sunny lunchtime.
It's a perfectly nice street, but there's nothing too photogenic in it. I suppose that's why I didn't feel the need to raise the camera too much on previous occasions.
Leigh Woods Purple Path
12 Mar 2022
There's a few tracks in Leigh Woods that lie within my mile and show up on my map but that I've not walked yet, so I decided to take one of my traditional big long walks through the woods on this nice crisp sunny morning.
For years—decades, even—I've been doing a similar route from my place, along the towpath to the far woods entrance, up the hill for a varied walk on one of the marked tracks and then across the Suspension Bridge to Clifton Village for a coffee-based reward. It's my default "long walk", really, and I almost always enjoy it. Today, at last, spring actually seemed to be springing, which made for some extra positivity...
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.
If you were following this route you'll have noticed I just magically took a shortcut through a bunch of houses. That's because I've elided the bit of the route that goes to Sarah and Vik's place and stays there for an hour or two.
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.
A Coffee and a Curve
27 Mar 2022
I wanted to have a wander along to the Tobacco Factory Market for some shopping, and checking the map for any leftover nearby streets I noticed a tiny curve of road on the way into the modern flats at Paxton Drive that it didn't look like I'd walked down before. I wouldn't take me too far out of my way, so I decided to head there first and then across to North Street to get my groceries and a coffee...
Ticking Off a Pocket of Paths in Leigh Woods
03 Jun 2022
I managed to go for a wander a while ago that was meant to finish off a little tangle of paths in Leigh Woods, or at the very least finish off my wandering of the Purple Path there. And I managed to miss doing either of those things through some kind of navigational incompetence.
Today I woke up with a bit of a headache, feeling a bit knackered as soon as I dragged myself out of bed, but at least with the energy to realise that I'd be better off (a) going for a walk in what looked likely to be the last of the Jubilee weekend sunshine than (b) moping around the flat until it started raining, at which point I could mope more thoroughly.
I had a look at my map, considered going to Ashton Court, but remembered that there was a music festival there today, and instead found these little leftovers of Leigh Woods and decided to have one more try at walking them.
The Mall was pleasantly decked out with bunting and there was live music, but sadly I got there just as the skiffle band were finishing the last song of their set. Plus I was knackered by this stage—in the end my walk lasted three hours, and I'd walked 10k by the time I got here—so I decided just to get a quick take-away from Coffee #1 (awful Coronation Chicken sandwich, sadly, will probably never try food there again) and head home, so this is my last snap of the wander.
(I timed it well, as the rain started not long after, and right now at half past five in the afternoon while I'm editing these photos it's coming down a storm. A very typical Bank Holiday in England!)
Leigh Woods Walk
14 Mar 2021
An enormous walk today, or at least it felt enormous. My feet are sore, anyway. I started off recreating a couple of local historical photos in Hotwells, but then headed for my traditional walk along the towpath in the Avon Gorge to the far extreme of Leigh Woods, up and through the woods to the height of the Suspension Bridge, finally crossing into Clifton Village for a well-deserved vanilla latte.
I say "traditional" because this used to be a very regular route for me, first walking, years and years ago, and later jogging—this route combined with a circuit of the Downs on the other side used to be my way of making sure I was fit to do a half-marathon (I did six of them in total, between 2010 and 2014).
I miss the routine of this walk, even though it's a long way and it used to pretty much wipe me out when I did it—I'd come back home and collapse and do very little for the rest of the day. But perhaps that's what Sundays are for, and I should try to remember that.
Doing this walk regularly was quite a meditative experience. Not so much of that today, but once I got to the further extreme of the towpath, where the roar of the Portway traffic on the other side of the river dwindles and I turned into Leigh Woods to climb ever closer to birdsong and further from rushing cars, I did seem to recapture a little of the feeling of previous walks. (I would say my mind cleared, but I was mentally singing along to Life Without Buildings' The Leanover for most of the wander. There are worse songs to have stuck in one's head, though; it's a great track...)
Anyway. Apparently the walk made me more likely to ramble in words, too. I'll stop now :)
I test drove one of these in 2005 and loved it, but the more practical Mini Cooper won out in the end.
I should see if there's actually a little public street set back between Princess Victoria Street and The Mall. I did consider having a look the last time I passed, but I think there was a lorry backing out of the way into the little back road at the time.
