Tagged: land-lot
I just wanted to get some exercise, really, so I set out to knock off the lower bit of Jacobs Wells Road that I'd not managed to walk up yet. I set the new signboard that the community association had had erected as my destination, after reading about it on their blog.
As it turned out, I couldn't even read it, as the building that houses the actual Jacob's Well had water flooding out onto the pavement. I wonder if it was actual Jacob's Well water? Have the soles of my walking shoes been mystically blessed now?
You can't see much of the flood in the photos I snapped, but I did shoot a little video, too. Ed on Twitter said:
I spoke to the seller at the time with a view to buying it - I mentioned an old friend who grew up nearby remembers it flooding regularly. He swore blind my friend was wrong.
I'm guessing by local artist ©opy®ight, though I may be wrong, of course. Graff's not really my strong point.
This was quite hard to read in person and I only nipped out for a quick walk in my lunch hour, so I didn't have the time to spend checking it out.
A lovely walk in the early spring sunshine with my friend Lisa. We headed directly for Jacobs Wells Road, to start off around the scene of one of our earlier walks, but this time took in Jacobs Wells from QEH upward, stopping to snap some photos of a Bear With Me, some interesting areas between Park Street and Brandon Hill including a peculiarly quiet enclave with a ruined old build I'd never found before, then crossed the Centre to grab take-away pies from Pieminister (I had the Heidi Pie) and head back to my place down the harbourside.
It's basically in the back yard of the Trinity Rooms, which is a house on Hotwell Road that I believe once connected in some way with Holy Trinity Church. My guess would be that that is some bit of leftover architecture from some demolition or change or other and someone's taken it upon themselves to keep it there as a bit of local history. Interesting!
A wander to knock off a couple of bits around Clifton Park that I'd missed out on previous excursions. This one took in the drinking fountain near Sion Hill and explained a little of how the Seven Years War, which ended in 1763, still has some history on display near Manilla Road.
It looks like a nice spot, but (a) it was bloody freezing, even to the point of snowing very slightly, and (b) it's a private garden.
A nice walk, but something of a failure, photographically. I went to knock Worcester Terrace off my list, a not dissimilar terrace to Vyvyan Terrace, but one street further away from me. Like yesterday, it was very chilly but this time I went prepared with an extra layer and a winter coat. I think this may have been my downfall, as it may have been the X100T's control wheel brushing against the coat that put it in aperture priority mode at f/16, which I didn't notice at the time, and made most of my photos a little too blurry to use. Apparently in this mode, the X100 doesn't bump up the ISO if it can tell things might be a little too wobbly. Ah well.
So, a nice enough walk, and technically I did Worcester Terrace, but if you didn't take a photograph, were you really there? I'll have to go back...
I actually dashed up to Clifton to take a look at Arlington Villas, just around the back of St Paul's Road, one of those slightly odd little enclaves of overlooked housing that you know is there, but you never have a reason to visit or travel down. As it turned out, interesting though the (public) garden is, I actually took far more pictures of the now-completely-demolished site bounded by King's Road, Boyce's Avenue and Clifton Down Road where WH Smith and other places used to stand.
It's interesting to imagine how nice this little area would be if turned into a permanent public square, but of course the developers already have their planning permission to build it right back up again.
This is another of Clifton's private-seeming gardens that are actually now in council ownership, not that the council actually has any money to maintain them, but there's a local resident's association here that seems to be doing their best. This might be a pleasantly shady spot to have lunch in on a hot summer's day, if I remember it's here.
Another day, another coffee. I think I may have knocked a tiny footpath in Baltic Wharf from my list of leftover paths in the area, but mostly this walk was about getting out into the crisp February cold and enjoying the walk. On the way I posted a letter at 13 Dowry Parade (home of a surgeon called Willam Falls back 1830, according to Pigot's Directory of Gloucestershire...) and pondered the strange duality of Dowry Parade and Hotwell Road, then wandered through the Dowry Parade end of Cumberland Piazza, enjoying the clean lines of the glyph graff, before taking the causeway route past a Cumberland Basin empty of water but full of seagulls, to make my way south of the harbour.
It's been very cold the last few days, so seeing as it was low tide at a convenient afternoon hour, I just wandered out to see if I could see the hot well steaming. I've been told that you sometimes can, on a cold day, but today, as with every other day I've tried, there was nothing in evidence.
It may be that the emergent spring has already filtered through too much cold river silt by the time it hits the surface these days, or even that it's running cooler than it used to. But perhaps I've just been unlucky.
I've noticed Oxford Place as a tiny little side/back road I've overlooked on my wanders a few times. Today I decided to pop down and have a look, as well as taking a few general snaps of Princess Victoria Street, which I thought deserved more pictures, as it's basically my closest decent shops, and in the Beforetimes I'd visit the Co-Op up there all the time, as well as the cafes (you'll be missed, Clifton Village branch of Boston Tea Party, recently closed in favour of Eat a Pitta.)
I'm definitely becoming more familiar with the area through the One Mile Matt jaunts and associated reading. Today I didn't just think, "oh, I'll head home down that weird alleyway with the electrical substation in it"—no, I thought, "I'll head home down Hanover Lane", because I actually knew its name. And on the way back from there I nodded sagely to myself as I passed St Vincent's Road, knowing now which St Vincent it's likely to be (St Vincent of Saragossa) and also eyed up the modern flats on Clifton Vale and wondered if they might have been built on the site of the former Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens... I don't know all the answers, but at least I have some idea of the historical questions I'm interested in.
There's a dearth of my favourite coffee places on a Monday and Tuesday at the moment. Both Twelve and Imagine That are closed on Monday and Tuesday, and Rich from Hopper Coffee doesn't seem to have come back from Christmas break. Today I pushed on a bit further than normal around the harbour and got to Little Victories, the always-reliable sister cafe to Small Street Espresso, based at Wapping Wharf. Along the way I saw graffiti, my second reference to one of Bristol's twin cities in two days, and a rather sleek little boat outside Rolt's Boat Yard.
The long road between Clifton Road and Park Place—the little triangle of grass in front of the Pro-Cathedral, which also houses Quinton House pub, the Park Launderette and Mr Swantons Barbers—is one I've travelled a lot, as it's a nice route between my place and the top of Park Street, especially Ocado. It has many names along the way, even though it feels like just one continuous road. It's York Place, Tottenham Place, Meridian Place and Bruton Place before it finally spits you out onto Park Place.
It was Meridian Place I was interested in today, as I wanted to explore the set of steps that lead down from it in the direction of Jacobs Wells Road. Turns out they lead to Meridian Vale and Meridian Mews, and come out between the Strangers Burial Ground and the Eldon House, opposite the entrance to Bellevue Terrace. I liked the little terrace on Meridian Vale, though they probably don't get a lot of light in the front windows, what with Meridian Place and Tottenham Place towering above them.
On the way back home I popped into the little lane behind Regent Street that houses the Chesterfield Hospital, as I realised I'd neglected that up until now. It was... unexciting.
It doesn't look like much. Behind that wall is my regularly-used cut-through between Saville Place and Fosseway.
The extra geometric shapes laid out on the lawn of the private garden added to the general polygonality of the area.
