Tagged: motor-vehicle
A Longer-than-it-looks Walk With Lisa
06 Jun 2021
The track on the map doesn't tell the whole story of this walk with Lisa around and about Clifton, Berkeley Square, Brandon Hill and the harbourside, because the batteries on my GPS ran out while we were on the roof of Trenchard Street car park, it seems. Oh well. I think I did most of the area I was interested in finishing off around the University; there were only a few new bits around Brandon Hill that won't be on the track, and I can easily do them again.
Still, technology woes aside it was a nice walk, albeit a bit warm for climbing all those hills, and sat on the harbourside watching the world go by for a while, too. It was good to see the Bristol Ferry Boats carrying people around again, especially.
Looked a bit to me like number 16 had tilted over to the left a bit since it was built...
This is clearly a 5-star insect hotel. I imagine the rooms come with hotel-monogrammed bathrobes and that there's a swimming pool around the back.
A Trip to the Library
08 Jun 2021
I had to return a book to the library—Ellic Howe's Magicians of the Golden Dawn, very interesting, thanks for asking—so I decided to pick the Central Library as my drop-off point and walk down a segment of Deanery Road that I've surprisingly overlooked so far. In any normal time I'd have been walking to work that way quite often, or heading through at the weekend on the way to do some shopping in the city centre, or for a coffee at St Nick's, but those excursions have been quite thin on the ground for the last year or so, for obvious reasons.
I've never been inside a single building on Deanery Road itself; the Library is technically on College Green and the rest is mostly student accommodation or Bristol College buildings, by the looks of things. It's a fairly mediocre street, used merely to get to other places. (St George's Road, which merges into it, at least has the distinction of several good shops verging from the practical and long-lived car radio fitters to the excellent little Dreadnought Books, sadly currently closed for refurbishment...)
After dropping off my book I came home via the harbourside, the better to enjoy the nice sunny blue skies of the day.
Leigh Woods Solo
19 Jun 2021
I hadn't really planned to go out for a wander yesterday; I just got the urge and thought "why not?" (Well, the weather forecast was one possible reason, but I managed to avoid the rain, luckily.)
I wanted to finish off the A369—as it turns out I may still have a small section to go, but I've now walked the bulk of it out to my one-mile radius—and also a few random tracks in Leigh Woods. I'm still not really sure that I'm going to walk them all, especially after discovering today that "the map is not the territory" applies even more in the woods, where one of the marked tracks on the map wasn't really that recognisable as a track in real life... I'm glad I'd programmed the route into the GPS in advance!
Anyway. A pleasant enough walk, oddly bookended, photographically at least, by unusual vehicles. Leigh Woods was fairly busy, especially the section I'd chosen, which was positively dripping with teenage schoolkids with rah accents muttering opprobrium about the Duke of Edinburgh. I'm presuming the harsh remarks were more about taking part in his award scheme than the late Consort himself, but I didn't eavesdrop enough to be certain...
I'm not sure what's being delivered to the lock-keepers' house, but it looks like they'll probably all be a lot happier afterwards.
I think it was at this point I decided not to bother walking alongside the road up Rownham Hill and instead divert into Dead Badger's Bottom, which is a prettier alternative. That could be a slogan for this rather mundane strech: "The road up Rownham Hill: less attractive than a dead badger's bottom".
They've been working quickly. I'm pretty sure this house didn't have the extension when I last passed.
I guess it's more to reduce road noise than privacy, but it seems a shame these lovely-looking houses are all just peeping over giant hedges and walls.
The economy seems to be booming in the area of big houses for rich people, at least.
Library, Bookshop, Coffee
03 Jul 2021
I was headed into town to return RA Gilbert's biography of AE Waite to the library and along the way I noticed that Dreadnought had finished their refurbishment, but wouldn't be open until midday. That left me some time to kill, so I bimbled around the old St Augustine's/Gaunt's area for a while, then headed up Park Street for a coffee and a snack to eat on Brandon Hill before heading home the way I'd came so I could pop in and buy a pamphlet on the Hot Well I'd been interested in for a while.
A dull alley, but an interesting number plate, at least. It's SSS 666; I've just checked on the DVLA website.
I wouldn't suggest following that link if you're at work, say, or if you don't know what OnlyFans is1. Maybe read the Wikipedia article instead.
1 If you type "onlyf" into my browser it autocompletes to the Only Fools and Horses wiki, which probably shows you how old and out of touch I am.
Circa 1905. See the previous photo for the modern-day version. Several of the houses on display were destroyed during the blitz of 24 November, 1940.
I'd never heard of this being called Love Street before. It does seem that it was, though: I just searched through all the various digital research materials I've gathered during this project and found this tidbit in A Bristol Miscellany:
It is proposed to drain the whole of this district by means of a low level sewer commencing at the bottom of Woodwelllane or Jacobs Wells road nearly opposite Woodwell crescent passing along the whole length of the Hotwell road and Love street to Dowry square continuing along in front of Dowry Parade and the Gloster Hotel passing the bottom of Granby Hill in front of Ashton place to Saint Vincent's Parade at which point it will receive the sewage from the Royal York Crescent, the West Mall and Caledonia Place, from which point it will continue along in front of Hotwell House underneath the rocks to the towing path in front of Point House at the Round Point to the present outlet of the High Level Sewer District being about 1,100 yards below the Hotwell House.
...but no other mentions than that one. Looking around the web, I can see a few more references, including this delightful business card for Hotwells gardener John Waldron.
I did idly wonder if "Love Street" might've been a euphemism for something, at some point? There were an awful lot of sailors coming off boats nearby! But perhaps it was simply a nice name for a nice stretch of road...
Photo from Hotwells and the City Docks, ISBN 9781899388288
Shops, Hedgehogs and Cows
06 Jul 2021
I really only took the GPS and camera on a "just in case" basis, as I knew I was only going for a coffee in Greville Smyth Park along a well-trodden path this lunchtime. Still, I saw a few new things along the way, so I figured it was worth uploading the handful of photos I took...
Dead centre of this picture is a herd of cows, though I imagine you'd be hard pressed to find them once this picture is shrunk down a bit for the web. They were more obvious to my naked eye, wandering around on the hill. You don't often see cows from town.
I thought that was part of Ashton Court's Red Deer Park, but perhaps they're diversifying...
Of course, in the old days you'd have seen plenty of cattle near here in the city. Just behind the Pump House were the cattle sheds and an abattoir that used to stand where the Rownham Mead housing development is now. You can see them in one of the pictures on the City Docks website, here.
A Cliftonwood Revisit with Lisa
10 Jul 2021
Lisa had a couple of hours to spare before going up in a hot air balloon (exciting!) so we went for a quick local walk, revisiting a bit of Cliftonwood we've seen before, exploring the secret garden I'd visited before that I thought she'd enjoy (I didn't take any new photos there) and then pushing on to another garden, Cherry Garden. Last time we passed this way, I'd noticed the gate, but we hadn't gone in as I'd assumed it was private. I'd since found it on CHIS's list of communal gardens in Clifton, so I wanted to have a look inside this time, and try to figure out whether it was private-communal or public, and possibly Council-owned, like several of the other gardens in Clifton.
Photo taken from the book Bygone Bristol: Hotwells and the City Docks, by Janet and Derek Fisher.
You can see the gate from the previous photo at the start of Narrow Quay. Plenty of other changes in the area, too: the statue of Neptune stands at the head of the water; there are no Cascade Steps yet; cranes still stand on Broad Quay, and you can just about tell that there's still a main road running right across the middle of Queen Square in the distance.
The gate stands half-closed; presumably before the E and W sheds were converted into the cinemas, bars and restaurants of the Watershed and other publically-accessible attractions there was still some need to keep the (working) dockside a little more secure, and I'm guessing it might have been locked at night.
The gates are listed and have apparently been there since 1894.
Okay, I don't think there have actually been any changes to this plot. I just figured I'd snap a different angle on it before it gets turned into a house.
Lunchtime Zig Zag Climb
13 Jul 2021
A snappy little trip up the Zig Zag to the shops. It's a steep old route, the Zig Zag, going from just over river level to about the height of the suspension bridge (101 metres) in a compact switchback of a footpath.
I was too busy struggling to breathe to take many snaps of the actual Zig Zag (I've been trying to make it up all the way without stopping the last few times, but I've not quite managed it yet). I did at least take a few snaps either side on this quick lunchtime jaunt to fetch coffee (Coffee #1) and a sarnie (Parsons) from Clifton Village...
But I don't think it's the original end -- if you check this picture from a history pamphlet I posted on Twitter you'll see that it looks like the Colonnade used to curve around rather more, and there's an even better view on this drawing from the British Library collection of Hotwell Parade. Looking at the historic basemap layers there on KYP it certainly seems like sometime between 1855 and 1874 (both Ashmead maps) the first couple of houses in the terrace were lopped off, leaving only numbers 3, 4, 5 and 6. I imagine they were shaved off at the same time as the second Hot Well House was demolished, which was in 1867. It used to stand on Hotwell Point, sticking out into the river, and the whole lot was removed to ease navigation.
I've never actually looked at the Colonnade door numbers to see if they're still like that—I'll try to remember the next time I pass.
Apparently one of the reasons that collections are being missed (this lot's been on Albermarle Row for nearly a fortnight) is a shortage of drivers. There's a general HGV driver shortage at the moment, as well as a backlog of testing for new drivers.
Autonomous Vehicle
14 Jul 2021
As it turned out, I didn't manage to get a coffee on my lunchtime coffee trip, as Imagine That were briefly shut down by a Covid-19 exposure notification (false alarm, it seems.) On the plus side, my trip was made worthwhile by spotting a couple of people from the University of Bath Mechanical Engineering Department testing an autonomous body-finding catamaran, which isn't a phrase I was ever expecting to write...
Pastures New!
17 Jul 2021
Okay, not much in the way of actual pasture to be had in Bedminster these days, like most of Bristol, but I did take advantage of the current rather toasty weather in Bristol to go and sit under a tree in Greville Smyth Park to read a book for a while before firing up the GPS and taking a little detour around some back streets of Ashton and Bedminster rather than going straight to Coffee #1 for an espresso frappé. This is the first walk in a while where I've actually crossed off an entire new street (the frankly unexciting Carrington Road) as well as exploring a couple of back alleys, just because they were there, really. Along the way I spotted a few examples of graffiti of various qualities, including a live work-in-progress by SNUB23 on Ashton Road and the finished Six Sisters project on North Street.
It was actually the sound of Six Underground, the astoundingly good Sneaker Pimps number, coming from this direction that caught my ear before the in-progress mural caught my eye, but they both had the same source, as it turned out...
I think I'm right in saying that that's snub_23 popping up a new piece, but I'm only really basing that off some quick Instagram research and some assumptions; I'm not exactly plugged into the Bristol graff scene and I didn't want to interrupt the conversation.
I'd noticed I'd missed this end bit of Durnford Street in previous wanders, so on my way to knocking off some full-length roads (and alleyways, as it turned out) I took a snap. It's not very prepossessing.
...on Bendy Studio, by Nick Harvey. Shame I couldn't get a clear shot. I do like a Siamese fighting fish...
Not much to say, really. The strange mock-Tudor upper halves of the right-hand-side of the street were about the only distinguising feature, and personally I'm not sure that's distinguishing in a good way.
I've clearly sniped this one from the end of the road on a previous pass, but this is definitely the first time I've actually walked the length of it.
This Scandinavian design shop has replaced the Hobbs House Bakery Cafe. While I enjoy Scandinavian design, anyone who's looked at my interior design and then looked at my actual exterior can fairly swiftly work out that I enjoy bread rather more. Still, I can get my hands on a Sherston Overnight White (best loaf in the world for toasting, according to both Hobbs House and to me) elsewhere, and clearly Mon Pote needed the extra space—this location is four times the size of their previous one, which was also much further up the road.
This is the end-stop for the Brunel swing bridge. Looks like someone's been doing a bit of restoration. I didn't actually check to see if it still had "HERE LYETH I K BRUNEL" carved on the back by some wag; I did at some point in the past...
A Journey to the Far East
25 Jul 2021
The far east of the intersection of my one-mile radius and Bedminster, anyway. I was feeling a bit tired this morning, so I motivated myself to get out of the door by imagining one of Mokoko's almond croissants. That got me on my way, and I wandered across to Bedminster, through Greville Smyth Park, along most of the length of North Street (looking out for new Upfest 75-pieces-in-75-days artwork as I went) and then onto some new roads at the far end.
I only wanted to knock a few streets off my "to do" list, but by the time I'd diverted here and there to check out various bits of graffiti and other attractions and come back via the aforementioned purveyors of Bristol's finest croissants, I'd walked 7.4km. Not bad for someone who woke up tired, and at least I've done something with my day. I'm very glad the weather broke (we had tremendous thunderstorms yesterday), even if some of the pictures might've looked better with a blue sky. I was getting fed up with walking around in 29°C heat...
Well, like last time there's still a van and a car in the way, but at least the van's smaller this time.
A Film Is Not Dead production, apparently. If I'd known I'd have brought one of my film cameras. This would probably look pretty good on the extremes of either Ektar or Lomo Metropolis.
Keith Hopewell's piece is one that got vandalised a few days ago, apparently by someone who hates Upfest. It seems to be mostly intact, though, barring the bit in the bottom right (close-up next pic.) Perhaps it was mostly saved by the CCTV camera that appears to be growing out of the girl with her back to us's left leg...
I like this piece, especially the somewhat Samuri-looking robot/cyborg/whatever-he-is.