Tagged: concrete
Coffee, Pirates and a Spitfire
15 Apr 2021
Just a quick trip to Imagine That for a flat white and a date ball (they're really nice), snapping the general sights along the way. No new roads, as has rapidly become the default on my lunchtime wanders, but as I'm in the routine of this project it almost seems strange not to pop my wanders up on the site.
Have I ever noticed this plaque screwed into Cumberland Piazza before? Was it previously covered up by one of the massive rocks in the row here? Either way, we've seen the Found Installation Group's work before...
A Wide Angle View
30 Oct 2021
I had an unsuccessful wander last week, on Tuesday afternoon: my GPS died within about five minutes of leaving the house, and I didn't notice, plus I found hardly anything I'd been looking for. On the plus side, as I was wandering around Park Street I decided to nip into London Camera Exchange on the offchance they had a secondhand Canon 17-40mm lens. I've been thinking of buying one for around a year, I think.
Long story short: not only did they have one, but due to a mistake with their price labelling which they kindly honoured, I now have a shiny new (to me) wide-angle lens and it cost me less than £300, which is a very good price for one of these in good condition (and including a lens hood.)
So, rather than try to salvage Tuesday's walk, here's a walk where I basically just bimbled up to Clifton Village for a coffee and wandered around taking photos of as many wide views as I could find. I took a lot more photos than these seventeen, but as you might expect, a new lens takes some practice getting used to, so most of them ended up in the "outtakes" pile.
I've mentioned the spire before, I'm sure: colloquially known as the "three pin plug", it's apparently meant to represent the Holy Trinity.
I'm not a fan of the asymmetry of the front door and, erm, garden path? Drawbridge? Skywalk?
One of several odd short-cuts and alternative routes I worked out to vary my commute to work, when work was at the top of Whiteladies Road.
I noticed I had a few things on my "potential wanders" list that could all be done relatively close to home, and in a fairly straight line, so I set off at lunchtime to recreate a photo of a now-defunct pub, wander behind a Spar (which turned out to be more interesting than I'd expected, but I admit it's a low bar) and spend some time browsing in Dreadnought Books before coming home via a coffee from Spoke & Stringer, a little diversion up Gasworks Lane and a tiny bit of the Rownham Mead estate I'd somehow previously skipped.
On my way home I popped through Rownham Mead estate and snapped a few things, starting with this house number that I've always enjoyed. This used to be my regular cut-through to the commuter ferry service back when I used to get the boat to work, so I'm very familiar with this little area.
As usual, the somewhat bland housing estate is elevating itself by means of the horticulture—I really do like the job their landscapers do in general, but most of the houses also seem to take a lot of pride in the individual gardens, too.
Just around the corner, you can see the old and newly-halved-and-relaid cobbles next to each other. (Technically I think these are actually setts, being squared off, but I think everyone in Bristol just calls them all cobbles.)
The End of a Private Road
27 Oct 2020
One of the homes in Windsor Terrace went on the market for £2,000,000 a few years back. This is the closest I've been to it, right at the end of the private road. Presumably they're okay with people wandering down the road if there's a blue plaque to be seen at the far end?
Both the plaque to Edward St John Daniel and the other photo I took (in these early walks I was mostly walking, rather than mostly taking photographs) have interesting stories of a rise and fall associated with them in the first Google hits I found. Daniel was indeed the youngest recipient of the VC, but was stripped of the medal by Queen Victoria herself in 1861, following conviction for desertion and evading court martial. Lubetkin is probably most famous for designing the penguin pool at London Zoo, which was closed 17 years ago, after the micro-abrasions in the penguins' feet caused by the concrete led to them developing an infection with the charming name "bumblefoot".
Designer of, among other things, the London Zoo penguin pool, and Highpoint, described by Corbusier as "This beautiful building .... at Highgate is an achievement of the first rank", and I like Corbusier's ideas, having read about them in How to Make a Home, I think, so that was what caught my eye on the Wikipedia page.
Bedminster
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.
Local
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.
Baltic Wharf and Marina
04 Nov 2020
You never know what you'll find when you go for a walk in Bristol. This gorgeous Mustang was in the Marina car park. Nice. I also surprised myself by getting a good photo of The Hand (to give it its full title, Green Hand of a River God, by Vincent Woropay. Thanks, @mfimage!)
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.
Little Clifton Village Details
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.)
I'm not entirely clear how a Bristolian called Marjorie Watson-Williams ends up moving to Paris, changing her name to Paule Vézelay, and becoming a famous painter of the abstract school, but it must have been quite a fun ride, surely...
She returned to Bristol when war broke out and apparently spent the first few years in Rodney Place.
I was once along Granby Hill when a dad and his two kids passed me, with each kid insisting they go down the SECRET TUNNEL. So they ducked down here, which pops out into Hope Square, and presumably saves people having to go the slightly longer way around to get to Clifton Village.
Doors and walls, closed paths and chalk
11 Nov 2020
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.
So, there's a side door that looks like bricks, and a main entrance that clearly was a door and is now very solidly bricked up.