Tagged: n
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.
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.
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...
Shop Fronts of Regent Street
22 May 2021
I didn't even think I'd manage to get out today, such was the weather forecast. As it turned out, it's been quite a nice day, and I managed to nip up to Clifton Village to pop to the Post Office. As with my last outing, I decided after snapping one shop-front on Regent Street that I might as well snap the whole row, and muse on a few of them, the only service I really offer over and above Google Street View for a lot of my pictures 😀
I have literally no idea what a "conscious apparel eco-fitness studio" is. It used to be Design Flooring, where I bought the oak flooring for my living room, a long time ago. It's lasted well.
The other two shops give an idea of the high concentration of hair salons in Clifton Village in general. I have little need of such establishments.
Leigh Woods Walk
14 Mar 2021
An enormous walk today, or at least it felt enormous. My feet are sore, anyway. I started off recreating a couple of local historical photos in Hotwells, but then headed for my traditional walk along the towpath in the Avon Gorge to the far extreme of Leigh Woods, up and through the woods to the height of the Suspension Bridge, finally crossing into Clifton Village for a well-deserved vanilla latte.
I say "traditional" because this used to be a very regular route for me, first walking, years and years ago, and later jogging—this route combined with a circuit of the Downs on the other side used to be my way of making sure I was fit to do a half-marathon (I did six of them in total, between 2010 and 2014).
I miss the routine of this walk, even though it's a long way and it used to pretty much wipe me out when I did it—I'd come back home and collapse and do very little for the rest of the day. But perhaps that's what Sundays are for, and I should try to remember that.
Doing this walk regularly was quite a meditative experience. Not so much of that today, but once I got to the further extreme of the towpath, where the roar of the Portway traffic on the other side of the river dwindles and I turned into Leigh Woods to climb ever closer to birdsong and further from rushing cars, I did seem to recapture a little of the feeling of previous walks. (I would say my mind cleared, but I was mentally singing along to Life Without Buildings' The Leanover for most of the wander. There are worse songs to have stuck in one's head, though; it's a great track...)
Anyway. Apparently the walk made me more likely to ramble in words, too. I'll stop now :)
Another Lunchtime, Another Quick Coffee Trip
28 Jan 2021
With very little photography, and no new streets. Still, I did manage to buy milk at the "Simple Cow" vending machine—and "simple" is very definitely false advertising; it took me bloody ages to work out how to use the thing—and snap the new ACER/SEPR piece down in Cumberland Piazza.
Better Look at an Extension
14 Apr 2021
Apart from a lovely coffee and a slice of Victoria sponge from Twelve, there weren't any new sights on this little lunchtime jaunt except for a slightly better look at the long raised extension at the back of the St Vincent's Rocks Hotel, where I at least got to see the arches it's raised up on. I also got a fair bit of exercise by walking up the Zig Zag to get there, and saw far more people out than I have in months, what with the lockdown having just been significantly lifted. As I walked past The Mall pub they were turning people away from their already-full garden, and the (outdoor) cafe tables were pretty full up.
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...
This is what I've been using to record the GPS track for all my walks. It's old-fashioned, but I find it more accurate than the phone, plus it runs off a couple of AA batteries and I only have to replace them every few weeks. Today it wasn't just recording my track, but also guiding me through a pre-planned route. Here it shows me direction, distance and estimated time to my next waypoint.
Bank Holiday Street Art
31 May 2021
A nice warm Bank Holiday Monday saw me walk back over to Bedminster to do justice to something we glimpsed on my last wander. Along the way I spotted a couple of new pieces of street art tucked away on the south side of the Cumberland Basin Flyover system, so this turned into a micro-graffiti walk.
I managed to knock off a reasonable chunk of the roads I had left to walk around the University at the north-eastern extremity of my mile on this nice sunny walk. As well as being impressed by the number of big townhouses now occupied by various departments, I took some time on my way there to check out a war memorial, and some time on the way back to do a little extra wandering of Berkeley Square.
The Theosophical Society also lets its lodge be used by a variety of other organisations, including the Bristol Dowsers; a branch of Carlos Castaneda's Tensegrity folk (some of the videos of Tensegrity are quite something); a meditation group; and the local branch of the White Eagle Lodge, founded by a medium who received various teachings from the eponymous founder.
Given that those are the groups who openly practise there, I can only imagine the list of occult factions who use the rooms on other days...
Coffee, Coronation and Clift House Road
28 May 2021
Another dash to Greville Smyth Park for a coffee from Rich at Hopper, but at least this time I managed to divert a bit and knock off a small section of Cumberland Road I'd managed to miss on previous excursions. Along the way I muse on a strange residence in between a warehouse and a tannery, and wonder if the Mayor might be deliberately letting the Cumberland Road Flyover area go to seed...
I composed a few photos to get the full length of wall in here. The whole of the Cumberland Road Flyover System is covered in tagging and graff at the moment; either it's really burst into life as pastime for bored youth since Covid or the council have given up on cleaning it up.
I suspect the latter—the more clapped-out and unattractive this bit of Hotwells is made to look, the more the Mayor can point at his pet Western Harbour project as an improvement.
Though originally it was a revAlution, it seems. I think they missed a chance to turn the "A" into the anarchy symbol, which would have styled it out nicely...