Tagged: land-lot
Lunchtime Cliftonwood Wander
18 Jan 2022
Another workday, another quick lunchtime trip to get me out of the house. This time my flimsy pretext is a tiny bit of Clifton Vale Close that I'd apparently not walked, and the fact that although I'd walked down Church Lane at least once before I still hadn't taken a single photo of it. Really I just fancied a mosey through Cliftonwood in the sunshine, with the promise of a coffee from Clifton Village at the top of the hill.
Or a bit of it, anyway. Getting back into the spirit of this project a bit by knocking off the odd end of a road that I'd noticed wasn't filled in on the map yet.
As modern flats go, these seem pleasant enough, and some of them will have amazing views. The don't seem terribly inspiring inside, from what I've seen of Rightmove pictures, but they certainly could be worse.
Bedminster Trip for New Walking Shoes
26 Feb 2022
I needed to buy new walking shoes—my old ones were squeaking and it was driving me up the wall—so I ordered some for collection from Taunton Leisure on East Street in Bedminster, and decided to make picking them up an official wander.
I didn't cover any new ground within my mile, but I did take advantage of the trip to take in a few interesting things just outside my normal radius, mostly New Gaol-related. Along the way there are a couple of sanitation-related diversions, including a visit to a rare manhole cover. You can hardly wait, I can tell!
Presumably this was the entrance to the stairs down to the ferry, long ago bricked up. There certainly seems to be a stairway behind it, though it's hard to tell for sure...
Back in the days of the Bristol International Exhibition we'd have been standing about where the replica of Bristol Castle was, looking toward the Dominions Pavilion and a bandstand.
Leigh Woods Purple Path
12 Mar 2022
There's a few tracks in Leigh Woods that lie within my mile and show up on my map but that I've not walked yet, so I decided to take one of my traditional big long walks through the woods on this nice crisp sunny morning.
For years—decades, even—I've been doing a similar route from my place, along the towpath to the far woods entrance, up the hill for a varied walk on one of the marked tracks and then across the Suspension Bridge to Clifton Village for a coffee-based reward. It's my default "long walk", really, and I almost always enjoy it. Today, at last, spring actually seemed to be springing, which made for some extra positivity...
There have been new plans put forward by the council for the Western Harbour Development The previous plans would have put a bridge in between here and the suspension bridge. I've not looked at the new ones yet.
This is probably the most popular spot to take photos of the bridge from this direction. I'd guess the large majority of photos of the Suspension Bridge are taken from the other side.
I was heading for my usual mid-walk picnic bench but I guess they're logging in that area right now, so I had to divert.
Just around the corner from where I live, and we've been here before, but I didn't own a wide-angle lens back then.
So, that was my walk through Leigh Woods. I think I knocked off a bit of path that was on my list, but at this point I've not actually looked at the GPS track yet. I suppose we'll see.
A Coffee and a Curve
27 Mar 2022
I wanted to have a wander along to the Tobacco Factory Market for some shopping, and checking the map for any leftover nearby streets I noticed a tiny curve of road on the way into the modern flats at Paxton Drive that it didn't look like I'd walked down before. I wouldn't take me too far out of my way, so I decided to head there first and then across to North Street to get my groceries and a coffee...
It's better than no daffodils, but they're still rather swamped by the rather industrial setting.
Easter Monday Gardens and Flowers
18 Apr 2022
I didn't really set out with a theme of flowers and gardens in mind for this walk. I just fancied heading up to Clifton Village to get lunch. As it turned out, though, Spring was springing, so a minor theme emerged as I started off with the graveyard flowers of Hope Chapel and wandered up to see the beginnings of the new wildflower garden at Clifton Hill Meadow.
A lovely garden. Sadly a little lacking in facilities at the moment, after some scrote (or presumably a team thereof) had it away with their cast iron table and chair set at the end of March. This is why we can't have nice things, etc. etc.
I've taken plenty of snaps looking at Holy Trinity from the road, but I think this may be my first looking at the road from Holy Trinity.
There was a somewhat precarious path in the road protected by those yellow plastic barriers to get around some holes being dug in the pavement. I chose the safer route through the church garden and thought I might as well take a pic from the main entrance.
On a previous wander I posted a historical photo of the church including this tree, and one from the modern day.
It's grown up quite a lot in the last hundred years...
Strategically-placed grit box, because this tight blind (hence the mirror) zig-zag is hard enough work without a sheet of ice on the corner on a winter morning.
This is one of the three experimental areas. Nothing too apparent so far, but it's early dyas.
Although the sign earlier said that you'd still be able to picnic here, I've never actually seen much picnicking. I think that's likely because of the danger of any round picnic items—around here more likely croquettes de foie gras than sausage rolls—escaping down the hill.
Moving on from Clifton Hill, I fancied wandering through Lime Walk.
I always take a look for interesting graves as I wander through St Andrew's churchyard, and there's been quite a lot of ivy clearing recently, so there's more on display.
...doesn't sound like the kind of man who would appreciate the somewhat lax attitude his gravestone is taking to uprightness.
A Swing of the Plimsoll Bridge
24 Apr 2022
I was originally going to head over to the Ashton area to see if I'd missed any bits around the football stadium—and also to grab some lunch from the Tobacco Factory Market—but in the end I got a little distracted by having accidentally chosen exactly the right time to see the Plimsoll Bridge swing on one of the first busy days of Spring, where a lot of pleasure trips tend to head out down the Avon (and possibly the New Cut) from Hotwells.
In the end I mostly snapped that, and just a couple of photos from the Ashton area where I grabbed some lunch but didn't do any new exploring.
This is a plaque to the Cumberland Basin Stabilisation Works, completed in 1991, about which I can find virtually nothing on the internet. The face is too crumbled to read all the words, but I seem to remember that it's a lot more legible at certain times of year/day when the sunlight slants across its face. I'll keep an eye out for a better photo opportunity.
In the meantime, there's a picture of this entire area being resurfaced while the basin is drained and dredged on this selection of 1991 photos on the Evening Post site, which I'm assuming might have been part of this project.
Ticking Off a Pocket of Paths in Leigh Woods
03 Jun 2022
I managed to go for a wander a while ago that was meant to finish off a little tangle of paths in Leigh Woods, or at the very least finish off my wandering of the Purple Path there. And I managed to miss doing either of those things through some kind of navigational incompetence.
Today I woke up with a bit of a headache, feeling a bit knackered as soon as I dragged myself out of bed, but at least with the energy to realise that I'd be better off (a) going for a walk in what looked likely to be the last of the Jubilee weekend sunshine than (b) moping around the flat until it started raining, at which point I could mope more thoroughly.
I had a look at my map, considered going to Ashton Court, but remembered that there was a music festival there today, and instead found these little leftovers of Leigh Woods and decided to have one more try at walking them.
At this point I'd just walked up the steep bit of Rownham Hill and was already too hot and a bit knackered. Still, at least it's levelling out.
Guessing this is a polite hint from the golf club. In my mind's eye I can see an irate greenkeeper chasing a couple of mountain bikers in his golf buggy.
I rarely come in this way to Leigh Woods—it's basically the car entrance, and I almost always walk here. On those few occasions I've driven here, I've mostly parked on North Road near my usual pedestrian entrance through sheer habit, rather than driving in and using the official car park that's actually in the woods.
So, I finished off my route along the uncompleted sections of the paths, and by then felt a bit lost, with all the turning around and circling. I headed in what I hoped was the right direction, wondering if I'd spot a landmark, and then realised that the giant hill I was right next to was the man-made iron age fort of Stokeleigh Camp, and of course I knew where I was. D'oh. Sometimes you really can't see the wood for the trees.
I was put into something of an altered state by the little pilgrimage to this random little area of the woods and my backwards-and-forwards wandering. This kind of state has been used, apparently, as a form of divination, which is something I've been researching a bit recently.
It took me a while to find the right term. At first I thought that divination through walking along my map routes might be cartomancy, by comparison with cartography, but of course the "cart" comes from the Latin for "card", so cartomancy covers divination by cards, like the Tarot. Then I thought perhaps geomancy, what with it being somewhat geographical, but the "geo" bit is "earth" in Greek, and geomancy covers, as Chambers says, "divination by shapes formed, eg when earth is thrown down onto a surface".
In the end I tripped over the right name: ambulomancy—"any of various forms of divination that involve walking, often in circles", according to Wictionary. Lexico puts its appearance as early 19th century.
Of course, presumably one actually has to divine something to be an ambulomancer, and the main thing I was divining was that there was coffee and and sandwich in my future now I knew I was near the Leigh Woods exit that would take me across the bridge to Clifton Village.
A Quick Swing Past Ashton Court
05 Jun 2022
Another day not dissimilar to my last wander: I'm feeling a bit tired and rather than just moping around the house I thought I'd find some tiny bit of somewhere that I'd not yet walked and get outdoors. This time I headed for the Tobacco Factory Market in Bedminster, as I often do, but went the long way around via Ashton Court Mansion as I knew there were some footpaths and a small section of road I'd not ticked off up there. Finishing all the Ashton Court footpaths will be quite a long job, but you've got to start somewhere...
I did feel rather better by the time I got home, and, pretty much astoundingly given the weather forecast, managed to avoid the rain completely.
Looks like work has finally started on the new flats on the site of the former railway depot/concrete factory/Bristol International Exhibition site.
I like the sound of "Flax Bourton". I keep on meaning to dust off my bike; maybe a trip along there would be an interesting day trip. Might want to make sure I can still ride comfortably before I try a ten-mile round trip, though...
Alan Barber, late campaigner for public parks and green spaces, helped design this rose garden at Ashton Court, and it was dedicated to him in 2008.
Trasparenza, by Andrea Greenlees, originally built for Burning Man in 2016. It has transparent benches inside, but it looked a bit of a tight squeeze, so I left the children of the family that arrived a couple of minutes later to it. They seemed to enjoy exploring. There's a view from the inside on Andrea's Instagram.
I'm in the habit of going over to the Tobacco Factory Market on a Sunday. I think I've walked all the routes around that way, but as a Plimsoll Bridge swing let me cross the road to the far side of Brunel Way on my return journey and I took a couple of photos of the brownfield development at the old Ashton Gate Depot site I thought I'd call it a Wander and pop some photos up.
I wonder how many different things this patch of land has been over the years? I imagine it was one of the choice "brownfield" sites for some new flats down here. It's certainly doing its best to look very "brownfield" today!
Quick Around-the-Harbour Wander with Lisa
20 Mar 2021
My friend Lisa was meeting another friend for a walk near the suspension bridge, so we fitted in a quick harbourside loop from my place first. We discussed gardening (we're both envious of the gardening skills of the Pooles Wharf residents; we can just about keep herbs alive, whereas they're growing heartily-fruiting lemon trees outdoors in England along with everything from bonsai to magnolias), cafes, work and architecture, among other things.
I lived near here when I first moved to Bristol in the mid-1990s. I never had to say the name of the street out loud, but it always reminded me of "GELF" back then—the Genetically Engineered Life Form that was a monster-of-the-week in a couple of Red Dwarf Episodes.
Having just done the tiniest bit of research after noticing while looking at maps that a section of harbourside here used to be Gefle Close, I found out a couple of things that make me feel a bit dim now: It's pronounced, as near as I can work out, "Yev-leh", not "geffel", and it's a port in Sweden, more properly spelled "Gävle", apparently.
Which makes a lot of sense, given that this street is on the Baltic Wharf housing estate, on the site of the wharves where apparently a lot of things from that area were imported and unloaded, especially timber, though Gävle seems to be more well known copper and iron.
It seems Gävle is pleasantly green and widely-spaced these days, having had major fires rip through it three times in the last three hundred years, and finally rebuilit itself with big espanades and a larger grid system with firebreaks. Sounds nice.