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.
I don't normally do HDR photography, and I still find this looks a little unnatural, but hey, it was just an experiment.
05 Nov 2020
I spotted the fog and decided to go for a morning walk rather than a lunchtime walk today. It was cold on the Portway, but it was worth it. Most of my One Mile Matt photos are "record shots", but it's nice to get the chance to do something a bit more artistic.
The edge of Durdham Down, where the railings are, top right, is known as Sea Walls, but nobody really knows why. It's not like the sea is anywhere nearby, and they're not walls.
This impression is reinforced to some degree by another fairly recent local name. In the Avon Gorge, the main high rock-face below Durham Downs, in Westbury on Trym parish, is Black Rock, which is sometimes loosely known as Sea Walls. Sea Wall appears on the OS 6" map of Gloucestershire (1888) in a position corresponding to the actual wall built on the cliff edge by John Wallis in 1746 (Goldthorpe 2006: 38), and the name originally given to this structure, Wallis's Wall, was replaced at an uncertain date by the present non-obvious one. Given that the term sea-wall is a usual one in the Severn area for the artificial sea-banks protecting the saltmarshes (as in the See Walles in Henbury parish in 1550; PN G/ 3: 136), it is strange that it should have been adopted for this inland cliff-edge structure. The earliest record so far found is also in the title of a painting, an early work by Francis Danby, "The Avon Gorge from the Stop Gate below Sea Walls" of c.1815.
— Some Local Place-Names in Medieval and Early-Modern Bristol, by RICHARD COATES with the collaboration of JENNIFER SCHERR
10 Nov 2020
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.
13 Nov 2020
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...)
30 Oct 2020
Something of a misty start took me around the viewpoint at the end of Spike Island and then on to try to find a new way into Greville Smyth Park. I got lost.
01 Nov 2020
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.
15 Nov 2020
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.
Not a terribly appropriate title, as it's from Monkey Swallows the Universe's Sheffield Shanty, and we're a long way from Sheffield. Still, the mood of that lovely song does rather fit with the morning.
In which our intrepid hero levels up.
21 Nov 2020
A rather more wide-ranging weekend wander with Sarah and Vik, taking in some mock Tudor bits of Bedmo (I should note that I've subsequently been corrected to "Bemmie", but I'm an outsider and have been calling it "Bedmo" for short for decades...), a chunk of Ashton, a path up Rownham Hill called Dead Badger's Bottom(!), The Ashton Court estate, a bit of the UWE campus at Bower Ashton, and some of the Festival Way path.
27 Nov 2020
I took an extra-long break at lunchtime today as I'd taken the day off my normal day-job to do the accounts for my previous side-job, which is still generating paperwork, though not much in the way of money. This took me through some undiscovered bits of Cliftonwood, including Worlds End Lane, which unexpectedly leads to White Hart Steps. That's certainly not where I expected the end of the world to lead to...