Tagged: fluvial-landforms-of-streams
I was just about starting to feel better—the antibiotics seemed to have kicked in for my dental issues, and it had been some days since I'd left the house, and I was at last starting to get itchy feet. So, a wander. But where? Well, there were a few industrial bits near Winterstoke Road in the Ashton/Ashton Vale areas of Bristol that needed walking. I knew they were likely to be quite, well, unattractive, frankly. So why not do them while I wasn't feeling exactly 100% myself? Maybe it would fit my mood. Hopefully you're also in the mood for a bit of post-industrial wasteland, for that's what some of this feels like...
Then, at the last minute, I thought again about the Bristol International Exhibition—I've got a book about it on the way now—and that gave me another goal, which could just about be said to be in the same direction, and I decided to walk significantly further than my normal 1-mile limit and try recreating another historical photo...
Sadly I don't know much about the Ashton area; it's just on the edges of my mile and I rarely have cause to go there. It's brimming with history, I'm sure: the whole South Bristol area rapidly developed from farmland to coal mines to factories to its current interesting mixture of suburbs and industrial work over the last few hundred years. As a more working class area less attention was paid to it by historians, at least historically-speaking, than the Georgian heights of Clifton, and much of it has been knocked down and reinvented rather than listed and preserved. I see here and there some of this lack is being addressed, but I'm afraid I'll be very light on the history myself on this wander, as most of my usual sources aren't throwing up their normal reams of information as when I point them at Clifton, Hotwells or the old city.
I nearly didn't take this photo, having snapped this view so many times before, but I do find it almost completely irresistible.
I've often wondered about writing some kind of neural-computing based app that could look through all of my photos for snaps of this view and mash them all together into a time-lapse, or something, but that would be quite the project.
A better view of the ex-railway depot and part of the former Bristol International Exhibition site that I've mused about before. That's why we're on this wander, in fact: curiosity about an old photo of the site. But not a photo from round here: one taken from quite a ways beyond my normal mile radius. It's going to be a bit of a hike.
There will also be some terrifyingly industrial bits of south Bristol along the way, so be prepared for a bit of urban decay and industrial scenes.
I mostly went out to hang out with my friends Sarah and Vik in Bedminster, but along the way I thought I'd take a closer look at something a little nearer home: the last crossing point of the Rownham Ferry.
That reminds me; I must re-read Iain M Banks's Use of Weapons again. In the novel he used the name Size Isn't Everything for one of the Culture's General System Vehicles, a spacecraft approximately 80km long... In the Culture, spacecraft are sentient and Culture ships choose their own names, often ironically.
He we have something of the opposite size of craft.
Yes, okay, it's quite the challenge to spot the hand-made historic artifact in this picture. In the next pic I'll zoom in a bit.
Again, the slipway is easy to miss. I like these little barely-visible curiosities that hide such heritage. The site of the crossing moved around—it's fairly obvious it wasn't right here in the 12th century, for example, because the river was only diverted into the New Cut, which the ferry crosses here, in the early 1800s. Earlier it was further downstream.
Although the tide's better now, the light was not great for taking documentary photos. Here we are heading towards sunset on the vernal equinox, so I decided to just try being a bit arty instead. I even took the lens hood off to try to encourage more flare. Just call me JJ Abrams.
Just trying to wring as much lens flare out of the camera as I could here, to be honest :D
So, one more silt shot and it's time to go home. On this wander I actually walked 6.4km, though the stats won't reflect that as I cut out the section of the walk where I went to Sarah and Vik's house. My feet were definitely tired at this point!
Anyway, hope you've enjoyed the wander and some photos of the last visible vestiges of a ferry that probably ran for around a thousand years...