Tagged: road-surface
The Long Lunchtime at the End of the World
27 Nov 2020
I took an extra-long break at lunchtime today as I'd taken the day off my normal day-job to do the accounts for my previous side-job, which is still generating paperwork, though not much in the way of money. This took me through some undiscovered bits of Cliftonwood, including Worlds End Lane, which unexpectedly leads to White Hart Steps. That's certainly not where I expected the end of the world to lead to...
I came up here drunk one night, searching for a shortcut home from somewhere around the Triangle. At least this time I was reasonably sure I'd not get out of the far end here.
You'll have trouble getting the bus up the White Hart steps.
Edit to add: According to my friend Jess (a very reliable source of information about Cliftonwood who's quoted in this Bristol Post article about the bus stop) it was put in 15 years ago as part of the West Bristol Arts Trail...
A long ramble, starting with trying to find the Hot Well of Hotwells and leading up the side of the Avon Gorge to the Downs and then through Clifton for coffee.
In full flow. The flat top of the water to the left of the overflowing rim sits above a semicircular-profile concrete trough that's designed to calm the water and channel it into the fairly calm wide flow you see here to reduce the erosion it would otherwise cause.
Ten O'Clock Shop and Can't Dance Coffee
30 Nov 2020
I had to return a faulty AirPod Pro to Apple (there's a first-world problem!) so I just took a quick trip up the hill to the nearest UPS drop-off point, The Ten O'Clock Shop, which is famously open until 11pm. Unfortunately it's a fairly cramped little place and neither of the staff were wearing masks, so I made it a very quick drop indeed and got out of there as quickly as I could.
I grabbed a quick coffee from Can't Dance, a stall that's—as of yesterday—in a tiny converted cargo container on the edge of Victoria Square; up until this week they were running from a little trike parked in the same place. Hopefully the new premises will let them see out the winter without worrying quite so much about the weather.
I tried to fit in a few extra streets from the surrounding area on my there and back, but that was basically my wander today: a quick little shopping trip.
This bit of grass is apparently called "Bobby's Green" or "Bobbies Green"—I've seen it written both ways. Several locals call it this; the only guess I've seen came from Louise on NextDoor:
don’t know why it’s called the Bobbies green except sometimes policemen used to lean or leave their bikes on the railings before there were so many parked cars. They used to come up constitution hill from the old police station at the entrance to Brandon hill on Jacobs Wells Rd and cycle around clifton so maybe that’s the reason- but that’s just a random guess.
Mint on the left, Rosemarino on the corner ahead, where the old York Cafe used to be, serving a full English for £1, back in the day.
Looking down onto Hanover Lane, which I often use as a cut-through when heading for the Triangle. In the Beforetimes I'd often walk between Waitrose and home via that route.
Around the back of the White Rabbit, which was the Richmond Spring when I first moved to the area, I think.
I'm not a great fan of their coffee, but that was based on a single try, so I should probably give them another go at some point. But there's so much coffee nearby that's pretty much guaranteed to be excellent—Twelve, Foliage, Spicer+Cole, to name but three—it's hard to take a chance.
Fruitless Coffee Excursion
01 Dec 2020
Unfortunately by the time I got to Greville Smyth Park I was already about halfway through my lunch-hour, and the queue was too long to wait to actually get a coffee. Is that a fruitless excursion? Presumably a coffee bean is technically a fruit...
This kind of vague musing was sadly overshadowed by my delay at Ashton Avenue Bridge on the way back, where someone—hopefully still a someone, rather than a body—was being stretchered up the bank of the river, presumably having just been rescued from the water. As I made my way home the long way around, avoiding the cordoned-off area at the back of the CREATE centre and its car park, I saw an ambulance haring across the Plimsoll Bridge, siren running, presumably on its way to the BRI. I'd like to think that was a good sign.
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.
Cliftonwood and a Secret Garden
03 Dec 2020
I love the isolation of Cliftonwood -- the geography of it, with its solid boundary of Clifton Vale to the west and Jacob's Wells Road to the east mean that you tend not to be in Cliftonwood unless you've got a reason to be there. It's not a cut-through to anywhere, at least not from side-to-side, and you can only really exit to the south on foot.
I sense that I'd be happy living in Cliftonwood -- like my bit of Hotwells, it's a quiet little area with a sort of quirky feel to it. Plus it contributes the colourful houses that are the backdrop of about half of all Bristol postcards ever made :)
I found the "secret" garden especially interesting, just for the fact that it really does feel quite secret, despite the obvious name on the gate. I've lived a half-mile from it for twenty years and I don't think I've ever noticed it before, despite exploring the area a few times.
I did once have a beer in the garden when it was The Spring Gardens. It became La Demi Lune for a while, from what I remember, then shut down. Having just Googled it, before it was the Spring Gardens apparently it was "Durty Nelly's"!
From what I can see on Street View it's just flats now, but I can't be sure without going and having a proper look around the front. Maybe next time...
I got curious about Bioinduction's sign down on the Hotwell Road once. According to the company's website theire mission is to "develop a precisely targetted brain pacemaker that offers new hope for the millions of sufferers... To revolutionise the treatment of cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative diseases where there is no effective drug therapy available today."
Apparently Gnodal "was a computer networking company headquartered in Bristol, UK. The company designed and sold network switches for datacenter, high-performance computing and high-frequency trading environments"
Strangers' Burial Ground
04 Dec 2020
I tried to find the Strangers' Burial Ground the last time was up in Clifton, but I'd not realised that Lower Clifton Hill continues further on after the turning with Constitution Hill. Sadly it was chained shut, but it still looks beautifully-maintained, perhaps by the same man referenced by this story from John Hodgson, which helped me find it. Apparently Thomas Beddoes is buried here.
Although, given the sign, perhaps I shouldn't have. But I didn't think they'd object terribly. I've actively interested in living here; a couple of flats have popped up on the market in recent times and the views are amazing.
Now that's some serious achievement:
Dame Katharine Furse, GBE, RRC (née Symonds; 23 November 1875 – 25 November 1952) was a British nursing and military administrator. She led the British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment force during the First World War, and served as the inaugural Director of the Women's Royal Naval Service (1917–19). Furse was also the first Director of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (1928–38).
Well, presumably. They needed an overflow graveyard because, rather unsurprisingly, a lot of the people ill with TB and other maladies who flocked to Bristol to sample the curative power of mildy warm spring water ended up carking it.
I think there's a way through there up to Meridian Place in Clifton Village. I'll try to find it at some point in the future.
The bloke in the sign is John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon. Among other things, he was Lord Chancellor twice.
Alma Vale
06 Dec 2020
I wasn't really feeling it when I set out today, on my first car-assisted wander. By the time I'd parked on Alma Vale Road in Clifton it was just starting to rain and I picked my way about in quite a desultory way. It felt strange, as I was very familiar with the area because I'd walked through it hundreds of times when I worked at the top of Whiteladies Road, and used to walk up the hill from Hotwells and through Clifton to get there, and back again, every day.
Then a complete coincidence seemed to make the change I'd been hoping for. I was standing taking a photo of Christ in the front garden of All Saints church when a couple of people walked out of the front door. I got talking with a lady I took to be part of the ministerial team, who invited me to come in and look around—something I'd always wanted to do on the morning commute. (I think we connected a bit when I recognised the name John Piper, who did the amazing windows—I learned about him while I was at Warwick, through his connections to Coventry Cathedral.
I left with much more of a spring in my step, wandered around the area a bit more, finally working out that the tennis courts I used to pass every morning are those of Clifton Lawn Tennis Club, and finally grabbing an excellent Hungarian sausage hot dog from the Budapest Cafe. I feel a lot better now than I did before I went out.
I walked past this a lot on my way to work for a couple of years, and always vaguely wondered what it was.
Mark's Bread
07 Dec 2020
I realised that if Hopper Coffee in Greville Smyth Park was in reach during my lunch hour, then perhaps Mark's Bread at the end of North Street would be do-able, too. And I was right. I also managed to cross Clift Road, with its pretty gable bargeboards, off my list, and encounter a dapper gent walking his dogs while playing loud jazz music from somewhere under his jacket. That's North Street for you.
There was some kind of portable music unit under his coat, producing trad jazz at a surprisingly good quality and volume level. It may have been Beiderbecke, but I'm not that conversant with the genre.
Pleasingly, a year and a half after I took this picture, Know Your Place Bristol tweeted a World War I-era photo postcard from the archives that has a very similar perspective on the same road (Direct KYP link)
I thought this was especially relevant as the tweet mentions that the road is otherwise unremarkable; the interest is in the fact that someone turned this presumably quite average street scene into a postcard whose image survives today, more than a hundred years later. I'd like to think that someone in a hundred years time might be interested in the quotidian scenes that comprise the vast majority of my little project here. Will this street still be here in a century? Will it still be lined with cars, or will transport perhaps have moved on into a new phase where streets are back how they were in the early 1900s, with no visible cars? (I doubt it, as that would require a massive change of mindset and the provision of decent public transport in Bristol, neither of which seems very likely...)
Gothic Revival
08 Dec 2020
I had a chance to dash down a few new roads during my lunchtime jaunt today. My favourite feature was 7 Wetherell Place, at the corner of Frederick Place, one street behind the University of Bristol Students' Union building. Apparently I'm a sucker for gothic revival, which seems appropriate for this little project, which is reviving my interest in the local area.
The listing starts "1860. By JA Hansom. For himself".
This is one of those streets you don't really go down unless you have a reason, which is why I always forget there's a busy garage right here. The nearest building seems to be offices, but I don't know if they're connected to the garage.