Tagged: door
Pastures New!
17 Jul 2021
Okay, not much in the way of actual pasture to be had in Bedminster these days, like most of Bristol, but I did take advantage of the current rather toasty weather in Bristol to go and sit under a tree in Greville Smyth Park to read a book for a while before firing up the GPS and taking a little detour around some back streets of Ashton and Bedminster rather than going straight to Coffee #1 for an espresso frappé. This is the first walk in a while where I've actually crossed off an entire new street (the frankly unexciting Carrington Road) as well as exploring a couple of back alleys, just because they were there, really. Along the way I spotted a few examples of graffiti of various qualities, including a live work-in-progress by SNUB23 on Ashton Road and the finished Six Sisters project on North Street.
By all accounts a fine cafe in the greasy spoon archetype. Top right you can see a little tribute to Ashton Gate football stadium, a stone's throw away. Currently the stadium is being used as a Covid-19 vaccination centre.
This Scandinavian design shop has replaced the Hobbs House Bakery Cafe. While I enjoy Scandinavian design, anyone who's looked at my interior design and then looked at my actual exterior can fairly swiftly work out that I enjoy bread rather more. Still, I can get my hands on a Sherston Overnight White (best loaf in the world for toasting, according to both Hobbs House and to me) elsewhere, and clearly Mon Pote needed the extra space—this location is four times the size of their previous one, which was also much further up the road.
This is the end-stop for the Brunel swing bridge. Looks like someone's been doing a bit of restoration. I didn't actually check to see if it still had "HERE LYETH I K BRUNEL" carved on the back by some wag; I did at some point in the past...
A Journey to the Far East
25 Jul 2021
The far east of the intersection of my one-mile radius and Bedminster, anyway. I was feeling a bit tired this morning, so I motivated myself to get out of the door by imagining one of Mokoko's almond croissants. That got me on my way, and I wandered across to Bedminster, through Greville Smyth Park, along most of the length of North Street (looking out for new Upfest 75-pieces-in-75-days artwork as I went) and then onto some new roads at the far end.
I only wanted to knock a few streets off my "to do" list, but by the time I'd diverted here and there to check out various bits of graffiti and other attractions and come back via the aforementioned purveyors of Bristol's finest croissants, I'd walked 7.4km. Not bad for someone who woke up tired, and at least I've done something with my day. I'm very glad the weather broke (we had tremendous thunderstorms yesterday), even if some of the pictures might've looked better with a blue sky. I was getting fed up with walking around in 29°C heat...
A Film Is Not Dead production, apparently. If I'd known I'd have brought one of my film cameras. This would probably look pretty good on the extremes of either Ektar or Lomo Metropolis.
One of those streets with Bedminster's tradition of named houses in evidence. I do enjoy them.
The word "woodbine" always reminds me of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, where Bert Baxter smoked Woodbine cigarettes. I see that they were invented by Wills Tobacco, presumably in Bristol, and I'd guess not that far away—Wills was founded in Bristol, and the Tobacco Factory bar on North Street was actually a Wills factory. They had offices nearby, too.
I imagine this house was named for the honeysuckle, though...
Green Squares and Secret Gardens
31 Jul 2021
At the end of July I went to have a look around some of the private gardens opened up by the annual Green Squares and Secret Gardens event. Sadly it was compressed into a single day this year, for various Covid-related reasons, it seems, so I didn't get to poke around too many places. I went to:
- A talk by the oldest resident of Victoria Square
- The St Vincent's Rocks Hotel garden
- The Paragon garden
- Cornwallis Crescent gardens, both east and west
- The Polygon garden
And snapped a few things in between, too. It was a lovely day—a bit too hot, if anything—and it was interesting to get into a few places I'd only ever seen from the outside, especially The Paragon and Cornwallis gardens, which are the least visible to passing strangers of all of them.
I've been wanting to go through these gates for a while; you can only get tantalising glimpses of the listed extension from the bit of grass adjacent.
A Long Wander Of Miscellany and Magick
08 Aug 2021
This was a wide-ranging wander. I started off crossing the river to Bedminster, to walk a single little cul-de-sac, Hardy Avenue, that I'd managed to miss on at least one previous walk. Then, pausing only to explore a few back alleyways, I headed for a few destinations related mostly by the Hughes family, who I've been researching a little as part of background for a possible novel, as several of them were involved in the Stella Matutina.
However, mostly it's the artistic side of the family I wanted to explore today, as that's where most of their public history lies (as you might expect, there's often not much in the public record about the workings of an occult organisation.) First I visited College Green, where the façade of the Catch 22 Fish & Chip shop still bears the work of Catherine Edith Hughes. Then I wandered up to the top of Park Street to pop into the Clifton Arts Club's annual exhibition, as Catherine, her half-brother Donald, his wife Hope and at least two other Hugheses were members. Donald was chairman for 40 solid years; Hope was Secretary for eight, and Ellard and Margaret Hughes, two more Hughes siblings, were members along with Catherine.
Finally I walked home with a small diversion to Berkeley Square, to confirm the location of Donald Hughes's house by checking for a particular plaque by the front door.
I must admit I'm not entirely sure where all this research is really leading me, but I'm finding it quite interesting to bump across the faint lines of history that link the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, to modern, quotidian Bristol.
My guess is that these rental parking spaces are very popular when there's a match on at Ashton Gate. I could hear the cheering coming from the stadium from my front room in Hotwells over this weekend (I'm writing this on October 3, 2021, as I've got a bit of a photo-processing backlog!) so it seems that biggish matches—either football or Rugby or both—are back on.
The RWA is having extensive work done, including fitting a new lift on the outside (on the far side from here) so people who have trouble with stairs don't have to use the frankly terrifying freight lift.
Mostly the Metal Animals of a Clifton Garden
30 Aug 2021
Lisa and I went for a longish walk, but I didn't take many photos. Mostly we just wandered and nattered. Unusually, my target was outside my 1-mile radius on Burlington Road in Redland, where I snapped quite a few photos of the collection of artistic animals by Julian Warren. This was mostly to provide a fairly arbitrary destination for a roundabout walk in Clifton...
More dual numbering. I was curious, as I think the first couple of houses of the Colonnade were demolished at some point, so I wanted to see whether (a) the old numbers were there at all, rather than just the new Hotwell Road numbers, and (b) if they maybe started at number 3...
We popped in. I bought one of Ngaio Marsh's books of Inspector Alleyn stories. The community bookshop is run to benefit Studio Upstairs, an arts and health charity. The Bristol branch is down on the Albion Dockside estate behind Bristol Marina.
Since I found out that Angela Carter used to live around here, I've read The Bloody Chamber, and it was bloody brilliant.
Shiny New Hope
24 Sep 2021
A quick lunchtime jaunt to Clifton Village. Along the way I admired the new sign on Hope Chapel and added to my tsundoku collection.
The scaffolding is down and there's a nice new sign (reminiscent of a historical one, I think,but I can't find the photo at the moment because Know Your Place Bristol is down) and you can just see the newly-installed solar panels on the roof behind it.
A Morning of Research and a Cafe in a Castle
25 Sep 2021
I needed to pop to the library, as they'd kindly dug a book out of the reserve store at the B Bond warehouse for me and emailed me to let me know it was ready. So, I took a little trip to town, straight down the Hotwell Road, and spent a few hours reading before stretching my legs with a walk to a new cafe in the actual castle (or remnants thereof, anyway) of Castle Park, before heading back home down the other side of the harbour. As well as books and coffee, I bumped into a remote-controlled pirate ship, which isn't something you see every day, even in Bristol.
This place has already garnered several good reviews from locals on Nextdoor and Google Reviews. I must try it at some point.
Rear of King Street. I would say "interesting frontage", but presumably this is interesting backage.
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...)
So, this must be where everyone from the harbourside flats parks their cars. I never really thought to wonder where the parking was before.
Fresh Fields
17 Oct 2021
For the first time in a while, I had the time and energy to go further afield and knock off some new roads from my "to do" list. I headed through the first Hotwells Festival to Ashton and Bedminster to cross off a few of the suburban roads south of North Street.
First, though, I decided to try to reproduce an old photo of the now-demolished Rownham Hotel just around the corner from where I live...
And I was right, the alleyway didn't really lead anywhere apart from people's garages and back gates, but at least 99 Smyth Road had a nice decorative number on the garage to look at.
Old house? I think the dwelling of an old man would probably mansus senis, but I was never very good with Latin at the best of times. For all I know it's a highbrow joke on Milton's panegyric to Manso...
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.
