21 Nov 2020
A rather more wide-ranging weekend wander with Sarah and Vik, taking in some mock Tudor bits of Bedmo (I should note that I've subsequently been corrected to "Bemmie", but I'm an outsider and have been calling it "Bedmo" for short for decades...), a chunk of Ashton, a path up Rownham Hill called Dead Badger's Bottom(!), The Ashton Court estate, a bit of the UWE campus at Bower Ashton, and some of the Festival Way path.
I mostly went out to hang out with my friends Sarah and Vik in Bedminster, but along the way I thought I'd take a closer look at something a little nearer home: the last crossing point of the Rownham Ferry.
There, hopefully you can see it now—the slipway of the last incarnation of the Rownham Ferry, in use from as early as the 12th century to 1932, when this particular slipway was last used.
There's not much to see at the moment, as the tide's a bit too high. I'm going to head over to the Tobacco Factory Market, meet some friends, do a crossword or two, and head back at lower tide.
At an earlier site, the ferry was mentioned in the Proceedings in the Court of the Star Chamber in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII after a dispute between a new competitor and the existing ferry, which was run by St Augustine's Abbey. Presumably the crossing was used to get to and from the abbey property at Abbots Pool, which I've actually swum in, from the Abbey, now Bristol Cathedral.