Tagged: closed
Underpass
25 Nov 2020
A quick lunchtime jaunt for coffee. I've often wondered about the dots on the wall of the underpass. Apparently they're not intelligible Braille. Maybe it's Marain :D
At least someone's still watering the plethrora of plants that are arranged in Spike Island cafe's windows.
Very Local
06 Nov 2020
It's surprisingly easy to overlook the giant Wesleyan Grenville Chapel—now converted into flats—if you've lived here a while. Other sights that seem to slip from my memory include the modest Ashton Avenue, a tidy terrace of little houses on a road that presumably gave its name to the Ashton Avenue bridge.
I'm in the habit of going over to the Tobacco Factory Market on a Sunday. I think I've walked all the routes around that way, but as a Plimsoll Bridge swing let me cross the road to the far side of Brunel Way on my return journey and I took a couple of photos of the brownfield development at the old Ashton Gate Depot site I thought I'd call it a Wander and pop some photos up.
They really couldn't make it much clearer that drivers are meant to nip off down the off ramp up ahead and take Junction Swing Bridge instead. But if anyone ever does I've not seen it. I don't think I've ever been caught in the queue here as a driver, but then I don't do much driving.
A Quick Swing Past Ashton Court
05 Jun 2022
Another day not dissimilar to my last wander: I'm feeling a bit tired and rather than just moping around the house I thought I'd find some tiny bit of somewhere that I'd not yet walked and get outdoors. This time I headed for the Tobacco Factory Market in Bedminster, as I often do, but went the long way around via Ashton Court Mansion as I knew there were some footpaths and a small section of road I'd not ticked off up there. Finishing all the Ashton Court footpaths will be quite a long job, but you've got to start somewhere...
I did feel rather better by the time I got home, and, pretty much astoundingly given the weather forecast, managed to avoid the rain completely.
Ah, so it's the triathlon next weekend, then. The swimming bit is done in the Cumberland Basin, so I expect they'll be draining it and re-filling it with fresher water towards the end of the week. I wouldn't fancy it, even in a wetsuit.
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...
I recently indulged myself by buying a little piece of history. I've mentioned Samuel Loxton and featured and linked to his drawings before, often in the eminently browsable Loxton Collection albums that Bristol Libraries has on Flickr. So when I saw a Loxton drawing of Hotwells pop up on eBay, I decided to get myself a little treat.
I don't think there's any Loxton drawing that features the road I actually live in—it's not very visible from anywhere else, not being one of these Clifton terraces that's perched at the top of a hill, or anything like that, and it's invisible in most views of the area. However, this Loxton drawing, Hotwells, Looking across the river from near the Clifton Bridge station, is probably the closest near-miss I've seen.
I decided to wander out one morning and see if I could reproduce the picture, and also take a photo or two of what's now become of the Clifton Bridge Station, which is still just about discernible in places.
(Then on an even stranger whim I decided to check out a possible little cut-through from Cumberland Road to the harbourside I'd been eyeing up on my commute to work, so walked to Wapping Wharf for a croissant via this potential new route, but that bit's not quite as interesting...)
Which is why swapping to this side of the river seemed like a good plan. Coronation Road is bloody noisy at the best of times, and it's currently got all of Cumberland Road's traffic diverted down it.
Man on a Mission
17 Apr 2021
I went rather outside my area today, as I went to pick something up from the Warhammer shop on Wine Street (Games Workshop as-was, and before that I think perhaps a rare retail outlet for Her Majesty's Stationery Office? I may be mis-remembering...) Anyway, a friend of mine wanted something picking up and posting to him, so I figured I'd knock some streets off my list along the way.
I first headed for the St George's Road area, walking down the narrow Brandon Steps and finding some strange wall art on Brandon Steep, then headed to the Old City via Zed Alley. The Warhammer shop visit was friendly and efficient, and, mission accomplished, I treated myself to a sausage roll and a flat white from Spicer + Cole, to take away and eat in Queen Square with its current decoration of hearts. I finished off with a detour up Park Street, looking out for St John's Conduit markers, before finally crossing Brandon Hill on the way home.
Quite a long wander, all told, and I'm a bit knackered today...
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.
Part of the wall has collapsed. It seems like the Council don't want to do anything about it until they can figure out the exact ownership, though local residents are urging them to fix it and worry about recovering money from anyone who might be responsible for some of the repair costs later.
Sequel Injection
07 May 2021
I saw this tweet the other day and started thinking of my second Covid-19 vaccination as my "Sequel Injection" (to a geek, it's funny. You'll have to take my word for it.) Whatever you call it, this morning I went and got it.
It was in the same place I got my initial injection—my left arm! No, okay, it was at the Clifton College Prep School. I didn't take any photos of the event itself; the NHS production line is so efficient you barely have time to do anything else, even if the privacy of other patients wasn't a factor.
Along the way I mused at all the road resurfacing going on in Clifton, and also discovered a secret (okay, not-well-known and possibly slightly trespassey) way into Canynge Square, and on the way back I knocked off a few streets from my "leftovers list" of north-east Clifton. I've got much of Clifton done now, with the only obvious "to dos" on the east side of Whiteladies Road...
It was quite a long walk, and I'm feeling pretty tired now, though that might be the effects of the jab too, I suppose. Anyway. Tomorrow and Monday I'm walking outside Bristol, I think, and I imagine my feet will need some recovery time on Sunday, so it might be a while before I post another Wander.
Told you they were doing a lot of resurfacing.
Here's a related fun fact to go with a dull picture, at least: the "greatest advance in road construction since Roman times" is the process of "Macadamisation": crushed stone bound with gravel on a firm base of large stones, with a camber, raised above the surrounding ground. It was invented by Bristol Turnpike Trust surveyor John McAdam, and was later refined by the addition of tar as a binding agent, giving us tarmacadam, or "tarmac", as we generally call it today.
So, basically, this ROAD CLOSED AHEAD sign, due to resurfacing, can be traced back to 1820s Bristol, where the very idea of surfacing roads was invented.
Victoria Square Underpass
06 May 2021
I'm meant to be taking a little break from this project, but in my Victoria Square researches after my last walk I noticed a curiosity I wanted to investigate. The community layer on Know Your Place has a single photograph captioned, "The remains of an 'underpass' in Victoria Square".
Looking back through the maps, I could see that there really did used to be an underpass across what used to be Birdcage Walk. I can only guess that it was there to join the two halves of the square's private garden that used to be separated by tall railings that were taken away during WWII. Maybe it was a landscaping curiosity, maybe it was just to save them having to un-lock and re-lock two gates and risk mixing with the hoi polloi on the public path in the middle...
Anyway. Intrigued, I popped up to Clifton Village this lunchtime for a post-voting coffee, and on the way examined the remains of the underpass—still there, but only if you know what you're looking for, I'd say—and also visited a tiny little road with a cottage and a townhouse I'd never seen before, just off Clifton Hill, and got distracted by wandering the little garden with the war memorial in St Andrew's churchyard just because the gate happened to be open.
EDIT: Aha! Found this snippet when I was researching something completely different, of course. From the ever-helpful CHIS website:
When there were railings all round the garden and down the central path, in order that the children could play together in either garden there was a tunnel for them to go through. This was filled in during the 1970s but almost at the south east end of the path if one looks over the low wall the top of the arches can still be seen.
