Tagged: floating-harbour
A London Wander in Southville
10 Apr 2021
There's a bit of Southville that I've been meaning to get to for some time, where the streets seem to take some strong inspiration from London. There's a Camden Road that crosses with an Islington Road, and a Dalston Road, even an Edgeware Road. For me these names are more evocative than the rather more exotic names I passed by to get there—Sydney Row or Hanover Place, say, because I've actually been to the places in London. The last time I was in Islington I saw Monkey Swallows the Universe play at The Angel, and I can't think of Camden without remembering a gondola trip with my friend Tara where a cheery youth played Beatles music for us on a saz...
I really liked this little area, with its mostly well-kept pretty houses and hints here and there of the creative side of the residents. It's arty and down-to-earth at the same time, and I wouldn't mind living there, I think.
On the way there I got the chance to walk through Underfall Yard for the first time in a while, and on the way back I had my first take-away hot food for many months, grabbing some crispy fried squid from the excellent Woky Ko at Wapping Wharf.
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.
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...
Autonomous Vehicle
14 Jul 2021
As it turned out, I didn't manage to get a coffee on my lunchtime coffee trip, as Imagine That were briefly shut down by a Covid-19 exposure notification (false alarm, it seems.) On the plus side, my trip was made worthwhile by spotting a couple of people from the University of Bath Mechanical Engineering Department testing an autonomous body-finding catamaran, which isn't a phrase I was ever expecting to write...
All the way to the marina, but my destination had disappeared! Lucy and Dan were fine and I saw the Imagine That horsebox back here and working the following morning.
It certainly has the look of an engineering prototype, right down to the Bosch Rexroth-style chassis.
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.
On a gorgeous summer's Saturday like this the steps by the Cottage pub would normally have been absolutely rammed with people drinking. I suppose there's still plenty of social distancing going on. Doesn't look like anyone's got a drink, either, so perhaps the Cottage have had to stop letting people take beer out here for the duration? I did pass their outside bar a minute later, though so perhaps not.
I'm so un-used to drinking now that I'd probably be laid out by a single beer in the sunshine. My Covid months have been largely dry.
I can barely stand up from kneeling without falling over on my living room floor; I doubt I'd manage it on a paddleboard.
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.
Things must be getting back to normal if you can't cross a bridge in Bristol without a hen or stag do waving at you.
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...
Bower Ashton is an interesting little area just south of the river from me—in fact, the Rownham Ferry used to take people over from Hotwells to Bower Ashton, operating from at least the twelfth century to around the 1930s.
It's a strangely contradictory little area, with a cluster of old and new houses sandwiched in between the busy A-roads and significantly more industrial area of Ashton and the bucolic country estate of Ashton court roughly east to west, and also between Somerset and Bristol, north to south.
I've been around here before, mostly poking around Bower Ashton's arguably most well-known bit, the Arts faculty campus of the University of the West of England, but I'd missed at least Parklands Road and Blackmoors Lane, so I initially planned just to nip across briefly and wander down each in turn. On a whim, though, I texted my friends Sarah and Vik in case they were out and about, and ended up diverting to the Tobacco Factory Sunday market first, to grab a quick flat white with them, extending my journey a fair bit.
To start with, though, I nipped to a much more local destination, to see something that you can't actually see at all, the Gridiron...
(I also used this wander as a test of the cameras in my new phone. I finally upgraded after a few years, and the new one has extra, separate wide and telephoto lenses compared to the paltry single lens on my old phone. Gawd. I remember when speed-dial was the latest innovation in phones...)
You can't actually see the Gridiron in this photo, but I believe it's still there, under that amazing buildup of silt.
The Gridiron—one of the few photos of it can be seen on the Maritime Mud and Miasma page of About Bristol—was a cheaper alternative to putting your boat in a dry dock. It was a 200-foot long grid (there seems to be some debate over whether the grid itself is actually metal, or in fact timber; I'll have to try to find out), 38 feet wide, nestled here between the north and south entrance locks. A ship captain could sail his vessel over here at high tide, then as the tide gradually receded, the ship—up to 250 feet, as overhanging a bit was apparently okay—would settle onto the gridiron.
At that point an inspection and repair crew could make their way down to the gridiron by ladder and do whatever work they could manage before the tide rose up again.
You can still see some ladders in place, I can only presume they were there to get you down to the gridiron, but that is just a guess; information on it seems quite hard to find.
Image from 1946 Aerial layer of KYP Bristol/English Heritage.
As you can see, it was pretty big, and clearly still in use in 1946...
One last snap before we move on. I'm using the wide lens on the iPhone here, and have managed to include a silhouette selfie...
A Water-Based Wander
11 Dec 2021
I woke up on this Saturday with a headache, feeling like I'd not slept at all. As well as that, I'm still in some pain from the wisdom tooth extraction I had a few weeks ago. I moped about the flat for a while and then decided that the best thing to do was to force myself out on at least a small walk to get some fresh air and coffee.
Was there anywhere I could walk locally that I'd never been? Actually, yes! Although it's not a road, and I didn't walk it, there is actually one route that I've not travelled so far in my wanders. And it even had coffee near its far end...
I'm heading for a coffee from Imagine That, in the Bristol Marina. Which is on the other side of harbour. Normally I'd have walked down that side to get there, but today...
First, though, we'll take a poke around the Harbour Inlet. Here's Skyloom just pulling away from the pump-out station.
This is a LeeSan LeeStrom LS200W Pump Out Station, I believe. It pumps things out of boats. You would probably rather I drew a veil over the details.
The cross-harbour ferry "ties up" to the quay at either side by dropping a hoop over a short post fitted to the edge. The hoop is lifted and dropped remotely, by a line running to the little cabin aft. The passenger ramp is also remotely operated—you can see the little block and tackle arrangement running to a pulley with another line back to the cabin.
The boat's crewed by a single person, and they're usually accurate enough with their aim and their remote controls that they don't need to leave the cabin at all during their back-and-forth trips from here, the harbour inlet, to the SS Great Britain steps on the other side. These days they've stopped taking coins, and avoid corona cooties by staying behind their cabin window and holding up a card reader to take your £1.20.
Bristol has a long tradition of ferries. The Rownham Ferry near me was operating in the 12th century, and I was reading about the planned temporary closure of Gaol Ferry Bridge this morning, which fairly obviously is the bridge that replaced the ferry that used to run between Bedminster and the New Gaol.
Interesting how "new" is quite a stretchy word. The "New" Gaol was demolished in 1898, and of course the bridge spans the "New" Cut, the diverted section of river that was completed in 1809...
My friend Lisa texted me to see if I wanted to pop down and take a photo or two of the event she was taking part in: Santa SUP. SUP Bristol organise stand-up paddleboarding on the floating harbour, and their annual Santas-on-paddlboards event is quite the sight.
On the way there, I grabbed a historical photo I'd been wanting to recreate for a while of the shiny and new Cumberland Basin flyovers back in 1965, because I reckoned I could fit finding the same viewpoint into my outbound journey. Also, after having only used it on a wander for the very first time yesterday, I managed two crossings in the cross-harbour ferry today to get to the best locations for snapping the paddleboarders...
So, then, this wander is mostly a bunch of photos of paddleboarding Santas. Tis the season... Enjoy!
