Tagged: home-door
Fruitless Coffee Excursion
01 Dec 2020
Unfortunately by the time I got to Greville Smyth Park I was already about halfway through my lunch-hour, and the queue was too long to wait to actually get a coffee. Is that a fruitless excursion? Presumably a coffee bean is technically a fruit...
This kind of vague musing was sadly overshadowed by my delay at Ashton Avenue Bridge on the way back, where someone—hopefully still a someone, rather than a body—was being stretchered up the bank of the river, presumably having just been rescued from the water. As I made my way home the long way around, avoiding the cordoned-off area at the back of the CREATE centre and its car park, I saw an ambulance haring across the Plimsoll Bridge, siren running, presumably on its way to the BRI. I'd like to think that was a good sign.
Bedmo and Ashton Court
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.
And Back Down the Hill from the Flu Jab
21 Nov 2020
This is my return from getting my annual flu jab at Christ Church, as explained in more detail in my wander up the hill.
This is now the Bristol School of Dancing. Their website says:
Built in 1893, it stands in the garden of 20 Vyvyan Terrace and it is rumoured that it was once a Swedish diplomatic building that contained a gymnasium. This is probably why on either side of the main entrance the words “Swedish Gymnasium” are carved.
Clifton Village Mini Wander
20 Nov 2020
Just a quick wander up the hill to get a flat white from Twelve. I really enjoyed the spooky mannequin (?) in the window.
I'm not sure what's going on in this fanlight on Richmond Terrace. Maybe it's space for a lamp?
Jaunt to a Closed Coffee Shop
17 Nov 2020
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.
Up until the owner retired a few years ago, this was one of those great combination Chinese/fish & chip takeaway places, and I used to enjoy everything from the crispy chilli beef to the cod & chips.
...which is also the name of the new hipster coffee place around the corner. Or am I bluffing?
Clifton Village: Jesus and the Tympanum
12 Nov 2020
My goal is walk down every public road within a mile of me; sometimes it's not easy to tell what's public. I've passed the turning for Cornwallis Grove a thousand times, but never had a reason to venture down it, and although the street signs at the end seem to be council-deployed and I didn't spot any "private" signs, it's a gated road and definitely feels private.
Gathering all the white middle-class privilege I could muster, I wandered down and was rewarded with the sight of a Victorian pump, a statue of Jesus, and from the end of the road, a view of a private garden that once belonged to a private girls' school.
The Cornwallis House history page says:
In the early 20th century the house, together with Grove House, became a Catholic school, St Joseph’s High School for Girls. The Congregation of La Retraite took over the school in 1924, with the nuns living in Grove House while the schoolrooms were in Cornwallis House. The headmistress was Mother St Paul de la Croix (Sister Paula Yerby). By the 1970s La Retraite High School had around 700 pupils.
It closed in 1982 and the building was bought by Pearce Homes Ltd (now part of Crest Nicholson) who developed it into 21 flats. Grove House next door was bought by the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, and was later converted into flats in 2007.
Baltic Wharf and Marina
04 Nov 2020
You never know what you'll find when you go for a walk in Bristol. This gorgeous Mustang was in the Marina car park. Nice. I also surprised myself by getting a good photo of The Hand (to give it its full title, Green Hand of a River God, by Vincent Woropay. Thanks, @mfimage!)
Someone told me, years ago, that someone had got planning permission to convert this building into flats, but had been refused planning permission to remove this handsome historic door. I have no idea how true that story is, but it seems plausible. The building is Granby House, on the corner of Hope Chapel Hill and Granby Hill.
Dowry Square Jaunt
16 Nov 2020
A quick lunchtime jaunt to Dowry Square, which is very close to me but, being effectively a cul-de-sac as well as a square, I've probably only circumnavigated a couple of times in the last couple of decades.
I wonder what else he did? Dowry Square was very popular with the medical profession, which sprung up around the hot well, mostly because of all the poor buggers dying of varous ailments who came along to be cured by drinking mildly contaminated hot water.
Hotwells and Clifton/Clifton Village
14 Nov 2020
A local walk with my friend Lisa in tow, including a coffee from the cafe in the Clifton Observatory, where I have fond memories of experiencing my first camera obscura, and cake from Twelve in Clifton Village, one of my favourite recent finds for both food and flat whites.
Awarded the prize, apparently, "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and for the resulting discovery of the pion." So a fellow photographer, I suppose. I tend to favour larger targets, though.
The Long Lunchtime at the End of the World
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...
