Tagged: cloud
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 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.
Presumably from the removed steam enthusiasts' railway line that used to come all the way here between the Chocolate Path and Cumberland Road
I's amazing how many non-buses you see driving down the GUIDED BUSES ONLY bit. Most of the seem to manage to stop before getting stuck in the guided busway on Ashton Avenue Bridge, at least.
I'd love to walk the Chocolate Path again at some point, but it's been closed since it started falling into the river. Still, on this wander to get a coffee I walked down a road I'd not normally use and found a door dressed up as a wall and another door that had been bricked up for real. Odd.
I also found a lovely bit of art on one of the Cumberland Piazza pillars on my way home.
My goal is walk down every public road within a mile of me; sometimes it's not easy to tell what's public. I've passed the turning for Cornwallis Grove a thousand times, but never had a reason to venture down it, and although the street signs at the end seem to be council-deployed and I didn't spot any "private" signs, it's a gated road and definitely feels private.
Gathering all the white middle-class privilege I could muster, I wandered down and was rewarded with the sight of a Victorian pump, a statue of Jesus, and from the end of the road, a view of a private garden that once belonged to a private girls' school.
The Cornwallis House history page says:
In the early 20th century the house, together with Grove House, became a Catholic school, St Joseph’s High School for Girls.
The Congregation of La Retraite took over the school in 1924, with the nuns living in Grove House while the schoolrooms were
in Cornwallis House. The headmistress was Mother St Paul de la Croix (Sister Paula Yerby). By the 1970s La Retraite High
School had around 700 pupils.It closed in 1982 and the building was bought by Pearce Homes Ltd (now part of Crest Nicholson) who developed it into 21
flats. Grove House next door was bought by the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, and was later converted into flats in 2007.
Cornwallis House's extensive private garden, with the back of York Gardens serried at the top.
Some days I barely notice this view, but if the light's right when I'm coming home I find it stunning.
Know Your Place recently posted a 200-year-old painting from a not dissimilar viewpoint (KYP map link), though I think that one's from further up the hill. I think the wall in the foreground of that picture is likely the curve of the Paragon garden, now fringed with tall bushes that would mean you can't get the same view these days.
A quick trip with the aim of finding a better way to Greville Smyth park and a good coffee. Sadly I was stymied yet again with the former—it turns out that you do apparently have to take a strange loop around the houses (or at least around the roads) to get to Greville Smyth any way other than my normal route, unless you're prepared to vault some railings. It may be that the disused steps from where the skater kids hang out to the flyover above might once have led to a shorter route, but it's hard to tell. The geography in the area has always confused me.
On the plus side, Rich, who runs Hopper Coffee from a Piaggio Ape does a great flat white and often has a good sign. (I collect cafe signs...)
This is one place the sign for Greville Smyth Park takes you. Presumably you're meant to dash across many lanes of busy road here.
Presumably this is where you're meant to dash across the road to from the ramp that leads up from the sign on the far side.
You can just tell from the one light in the grille that I managed to catch that the blues and twos were running. It was more dramatic in person.
A local walk with my friend Lisa in tow, including a coffee from the cafe in the Clifton Observatory, where I have fond memories of experiencing my first camera obscura, and cake from Twelve in Clifton Village, one of my favourite recent finds for both food and flat whites.
This started as a little local walk with my friend Lisa, but when we randomly met my friends Sarah and Vik at Ashton Court, turned into joining them for a very long wander out to Abbots Leigh Pool. Most of this was well outside my one-mile radius but it was a lovely walk.
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.
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.
I believe the Hotwells Pine owners decided to retire, like the owner of the fish & chip shop a little further along. Asia Channel did excellent food, but had some kind of family crisis and closed down quite abruptly, sadly. The dentist on the end seems to do a good trade, and Hotwells Fabrics is still going. The one in between them and Asia Channel has been threatening to turn into a deli for a few years now, I think, but perhaps that's fallen by the wayside. Seems a terrible shame when we could do with a few more good local shops. Hotwells has definitely thrived more than this, in the past.
I hope the Bear survives. It's a bit too sport-oriented for my taste, but they've been welcoming the couple of times I've been in.
It looks like the fish & chip shop might be getting a refurb, and the restaurant at the end, which used to be a great Persian place is apparently now a great Indian place. The bow-fronted place in the middle was a small "corner" shop for years, but there's barely any more space in there than there is in my living room so it must've been hard to keep it going. That closed down four or five years ago, I think.
I looked at a flat in the ex-council flats that makes up the far half of this block of the Hotwell Road before finally settling on the more old-fashioned place I live now, not far from here.