A fruitless wander, as Spoke and Stringer (who I thought might do a decent flat white) were closed, and the only other harbourside inlet offering were a bit too busy to wait at, especially as I'd spent some time wandering some of the convolutions of Rownham Mead. This last congeries of dull alleyways and brown-painted garages was at least somewhere I've never been before, in parts.
A bethel ship was a kind of floating church; it would moor up near other ships and the sailors could board it for worship.
When the commuter ferry was still a thing—the council subsidy was cut in the wake of the last global recession—I used to wander through this little alleyway all the time to wait at the ferry stop at this little inlet for the boat to work. Happier times.
According to Wikipedia, this sculpture was commissioned by the house builders who developed the site, designed by a student at the University of the West of England Art School with engineering by David Abel's Boatyard.
There's a lot of Hope in Hotwells, not least because of benefactor Lady Henrietta Hope. Hope Chapel was completed posthumously in her name after she bequeathed £2,500 for the project, which was a lot of money in 1786... A local community centre when I first arrived in Hotwells, it's now been returned to something closer to its original intent by the Hope Community Church
In which our intrepid hero levels up.
Quite a line-up. I'm afraid to say I've only read the obvious writer here; I've just popped Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber on my "to-read" list to try and make up for that, but it's quite a long list right now.
Okay, I successfully reached Greville Smyth the long way round. Of course, there's no coffee van to be found now I'm here. Curses!
A sunny day, and though I should have probably headed for less well-travelled territory I just headed over to the Marina to grab a flat white from Imagine That's horsebox café.
Just a quick wander up the hill to get a flat white from Twelve. I really enjoyed the spooky mannequin (?) in the window.
Many a time have I wandered down this little cut-through that joins Saville Place and the Fosseway. A shortcut through the Polygon starts me off, then it's pretty much a straight line up through to here and on to Queen's Road.
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.
I have no idea how anyone managed to smack this street furniture so hard, or what direction they came from to do it. It's a pretty straight 30mph road right there, and this is only one side of the dual carriageway. Never seen so much as a near-miss there.
That a BMW came a tad too fast out of Clifton Vale, lost it completely and trashed the main control box for the traffic lights. It took them quite some time to fix it. I'd imagine his insurance company is getting quite the bill...
A quick lunchtime jaunt for coffee. I've often wondered about the dots on the wall of the underpass. Apparently they're not intelligible Braille. Maybe it's Marain :D
Given that it's on an unwalled bike shed, I doubt it's there for insulation. The CREATE centre my just have it there as an example of what an eco-friendly roof can look like, though.
This is my return from getting my annual flu jab at Christ Church, as explained in more detail in my wander up the hill.
For some reason I'm reminded of the time I was browsing the sadly-now-gone Avon Books (which used to occupy 4a Waterloo Street, next to Kitchen Artillery, which occupies 4b) and found that all the books on subjects like this were collected into a section labelled "Mumbo Jumbo"
A trip up the hill to get my winter flu jab. I'm not sure I really needed it this year, what with avoiding Covid—I haven't had so much as a sniffle in more than a year—but seeing as they offered... Instead of the doctor's surgery on Pembroke Road, they'd taken over Christ Church, presumably to give more room and ventilation for the necessary social distancing at the moment. As usual, it was their typically efficient operation, and I was in and out in about three minutes.
On the way there and back I snapped as much as I could, but I wanted to be home in time for the first online Times Crossword Championship. As it turned out, I needn't have bothered, as the technology at the Times couldn't keep up with the demand from competitors, and their system just collapsed under the weight of page-views. They tried again the day after, and it collapsed just as badly. Maybe next year...
This wander is split into two parts, as I turned my tech off to go into Christ Church for my jab. The walk home can be found over here.
This was meant to be the day of the first online Times Cryptic Crossword Championship. Sadly the Times's web servers let them down, so the event was a washout, and I dashed back from my flu jab to take part for no good reason, as it turned out.
I took the day off my day job to do my accounts—or at least do enough bookkeeping to send them to my accountant. I hate doing the books. I woke up late, tired and with a headache and decided to bunk off for a walk around Cliftonwood, Clifton Village and Clifton instead, taking in a couple of good coffees along the way. Thanks, Foliage Café, and Twelve for the flat whites.