Tagged: places
Nothing New
02 Dec 2020
This may be the very first time I've gone for a One Mile Matt wander and not actually gone down any new roads, trod any new steps. I just wanted a coffee, frankly, so I went the same old way to Imagine That in the marina and back again.
I think someone lost their hair extension. Or this is the resting place of a My Little Pony that's been buried arse-up.
I'm always a little worried that one day a swan's going to get garotted by this wire strung across the bit of Cumberland Basin behind the little causeway. It's used by the water football (?) people to string their goal up.
Mokoko
26 Oct 2020
A dash around the harbourside to see if I can get to Mokoko and back in my lunch hour.
This was my first wander and I was still getting the hang of the technology. I managed to record only part of the way back on my GPS, by the looks of it, so I've had to bodge things a bit to pick up the photos, which is why there are photos in places the track doesn't reach!
I also need to fix a few technical things including managing my photo timezones more carefully. This wander was the day after the clocks went back for winter, and I think my camera may still have been in BST, which may not have helped me tie things up. Need to do a bit of research into how my cameras, Lightroom and the code I'm writing on this website handle BST and GMT, but at least I have until the last Sunday in March before things get urgent, I think...
I'm not sure about publishing this one. I wouldn't normally snap a photo of a single stranger in an only-semi-public place like a cafe. On the other hand, I thought it was an interesting document of the way people are coping with Covid and I quite like it as photo, which tipped the balance into publication.
Mokoko's almond croissant are one of my favourite treats in Bristol. I'm glad they're pretty much diametrically opposite me on the harbourside—if they were easy to get to I'd be a lot fatter.
The End of a Private Road
27 Oct 2020
One of the homes in Windsor Terrace went on the market for £2,000,000 a few years back. This is the closest I've been to it, right at the end of the private road. Presumably they're okay with people wandering down the road if there's a blue plaque to be seen at the far end?
Both the plaque to Edward St John Daniel and the other photo I took (in these early walks I was mostly walking, rather than mostly taking photographs) have interesting stories of a rise and fall associated with them in the first Google hits I found. Daniel was indeed the youngest recipient of the VC, but was stripped of the medal by Queen Victoria herself in 1861, following conviction for desertion and evading court martial. Lubetkin is probably most famous for designing the penguin pool at London Zoo, which was closed 17 years ago, after the micro-abrasions in the penguins' feet caused by the concrete led to them developing an infection with the charming name "bumblefoot".
Designer of, among other things, the London Zoo penguin pool, and Highpoint, described by Corbusier as "This beautiful building .... at Highgate is an achievement of the first rank", and I like Corbusier's ideas, having read about them in How to Make a Home, I think, so that was what caught my eye on the Wikipedia page.
Greville Smyth
28 Oct 2020
Popped out for a coffee in Greville Smyth park, and got a view of the Andy Council work on the side of the Ashton Avenue sewage pumping station on the way back.
Catherine Progress
29 Oct 2020
They're refurbishing (by which they seem to mean ripping almost completely apart and rebuilding) the Catherine in Underfall Yard at the moment. I like checking on the progress when I pass by the Patent Slip.
I nearly threw this shot away, but the weird look of the photo sort of goes okay with the weird look of passionflowers in general. Alien-looking thingies. This one's in a front garden at the Cumberland Road end of Avon Crescent.
Most of the refit of the Catherine so far seems to have involved throwing increasingly large chunks of it away. I thought those chairs looked really comfy, though, apart from the fact they'd have been sopping wet from the rain. And who knows what else, given the Catherine's rather chequered past—apparently it was a brothel for a while, among other things.
They've been trying to pretty it up, but it's a bit like putting a small elastoplast on a severed limb.
Bedminster
31 Oct 2020
Starting up close in Hotwells with a few bits around the Cumberland Basin flyover system, I walked to Bedminster and back on Hallowe'en, including finding some excellent decoration work.
Not many people want to get from one side to the other here, and those that do normally just cross the road; it's normally fairly quiet.
I may have used these steps, a few hundred metres from my house, at some point since I moved in, 21 years ago, but I don't remember doing it.
I like the way I can sometimes make something that seems pretty out of the less-attractive bits of the Cumberland Road Flyover System
Not sure I've walked along the flyover here. Have I ever seen the Cumberland Basin from this angle before?
Royal York Crescent
02 Nov 2020
I've taken a lot of photos of Royal York Crescent over the years. This time I walked right to the dead-end bit at the far west corner and found a plaque to the Empress of the French. Call me hard to impress, but among the scientists, novelists, architects and artists whose plaques litter the rest of the area, that seems quite minor claim to fame.
A gated community, apparently. There's a few of these little enclaves in Clifton, often hidden "around the back", as mews always were, I suppose.
I enjoy walking along Royal York Crescent enough that it's a frequent diversion from my quickest way home
And in between times were the Napoleonic Wars, which probably explains the desire for a barracks.
I've been tempted to try these Voi scooters-for-hire to expand my range for lunchtime wanders. However, having read their rules, at 118kg I'm 18kg over their maximum weight limit.
Local
03 Nov 2020
A very local exploration today, but there are still bits of the near field that I never need to walk down, so it didn't take me long to find somewhere I haven't been in a decade or more, the little enclave of smaller Victorian houses around Oldfield Road and Sandford Road. I'd really like to live in one of those houses, but I doubt I could afford it.
Another place I've passed so many times that I forget it's there. Haberfield House is a giant Victorian almshouse on Joy Hill, hidden from the Hotwell Road by a tall brick wall, but apparently with gardens around that side. I believe it's now privately-owned bedsit-style accommodation, but it's hard to find out much about it. It doesn't help that there's at least one other Haberfield house in Bristol (also an ex-almshouse, now and old people's home) which makes searches a little difficult.
There are ongoing proposals from the owner to convert the roofpace into more flats, in Bristol's ongoing mission to cram even more poeple into even less space, it seems.
This Charity was
FOUNDED BY
Dame Sarah Haberfield
In Affectionate Remembrance
OF HER HUSBAND,
Sir Jobn
Kerle Fabertied
KNIGHT
SIX TIMES MAYOR OF BRISTOL,
Who Died on the 27th December, 1857
HAVING BEEN
FOR MANY YEARS AN INHABITANT OF THE
PARISH OF ST. MARY REDCHEFE AND
OF THE PARISH OF CLIFTON
The Rose of Denmark, there, trying their best to ply some kind of trade during the lockdown.
I imagine it got more use when the GP surgery down the road was still open. Dr. Ring retired a few years ago, and couldn't find anyone to take it over, more's the pity.
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.
I can't recall walking around this side of the Plimsoll Bridge pivot before, for no other reason than habit, I think.
I considered going down to the end of this engineering bit behind the Harbourmaster's office, but I know it's a dead end and I don't think the woman walking her dog did. It felt like it would be a bit weird to follow someone down a dead end, so maybe I'll go back another day. On the other hand, I don't think it counts as a public road..
Morning Mist
05 Nov 2020
I spotted the fog and decided to go for a morning walk rather than a lunchtime walk today. It was cold on the Portway, but it was worth it. Most of my One Mile Matt photos are "record shots", but it's nice to get the chance to do something a bit more artistic.
