11 Apr 2021
My friend Lisa joined me again, this time for a long wander through "Bemmie". In fact, I tweeted recently using "Bedmo" as my abbreviation for Bedminster, and apparently there's something of a culture war going on. From what I can glean, the longer-term residents call it "Bemmie" and consider "Bedmo" a name made up by hipster gentrifiers.
I had no idea, but then I didn't grow up around here, and I don't live in Bedminster, and I'm not a hipster. I'm not sure I've ever gentrified anywhere, either; Hotwells was already quite gentrified by the time I arrived. I probably just lowered the tone a bit.
Anyway. Lisa and I entered Bemmie by the traditional toll gate (though actually you'd only have paid if you were coming from the Long Ashton direction, not merely nipping across from Hotwells) and then almost literally combed the streets to knock several new roads off my list of targets. Along the way we saw lots of street art, as you'd expect, and admired the area's panoply of gorgeous knockers.
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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.
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29 May 2021
I met my friends Sarah and Vik at Riverside Garden Centre today; I needed to buy some compost for repotting my wildly-overgrowing aloe vera, and I went a little bit out of my way to knock off a stretch of Ashton Road. It was a pleasant enough walk in the surprisingly warm (and surprising-not-tipping-it-down-on-a-Bank-Holiday-weekend) weather.
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20 Dec 2020
A long meander around bits of Bedminster, from the river to the north to Winterstoke Road to the south, taking a few roads I've seen before, and a few I haven't. The Christmas decorations were an extra bonus.
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28 Dec 2020
Fractionally outside my one-mile zone, but I got curious about Saint Vincent's spring, whose last remnants you can see in a defunct drinking fountain on the Portway. Along the way I passed Gyston's cave, sometimes called St Vincent's cave, in the sheer wall of the gorge. It's now accessible by a tunnel from the observatory—I tried it about twenty years ago, I think, and still recall the vertiginous moment of looking down from the protruding balcony and realising that you could see straight through the grille floor to the drop below—but from what I can work out the tunnel is relatively recent. Before the tunnel was dug it was accessible only by access across the cliff face, which must have been even more terrifying.
This cave was first mentioned as being a chapel in the year AD 305 and excavations, in which Romano-British pottery has been found, have revealed that it has been both a holy place and a place of refuge at various times in its history.
A few different sources say that the cave became a hermitage and chapel to St Vincent following Bristol's early trading in Iberian wines; St Vincent of Saragossa is Lisbon's patron saint, and a lot of nearby things bear the name.
I'm not sure where the crossover of Vincent and Ghyston happens, though. On the giants Goram and Vincent (or Ghyston), Wikipedia says:
The name Vincent for one of the giants rests on the fact that at Clifton, at the narrowest point of the Avon Gorge, there was formerly an ancient hermitage and chapel dedicated to St Vincent, at or near the present cave in the cliff-face which bears his name. Another (apparently modern) version of the story calls the Clifton giant Ghyston, which is in fact the name, of obscure origin, for the whole of the cliff-face of the Avon Gorge at least as early as the mid-fifteenth century, in the detailed description of the Bristol area by William Worcestre. The place-name was personified to produce the giant's name. Vincent's Cave is called Ghyston cave or The Giant’s Hole in an article in the July 1837 issue of Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal.
In my research on the original Hot Well House, I've seen quite a few contemporary paintings which state their viewpoint as "from St. Vincent's Rock", so in the 16th century it seems the cliff-face name was typically St Vincent Rock rather than Ghyston's Rock, perhaps.
I am, as you can tell, no historian!
On the way, I also wandered around the base of the popular climbing area, which I think is the site of the old Black Rock quarry.
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17 Nov 2020
A fruitless wander, as Spoke and Stringer (who I thought might do a decent flat white) were closed, and the only other harbourside inlet offering were a bit too busy to wait at, especially as I'd spent some time wandering some of the convolutions of Rownham Mead. This last congeries of dull alleyways and brown-painted garages was at least somewhere I've never been before, in parts.
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I've been pretty awful at reading so far this year, apparently averaging about one book per month. That's a far cry from 2019, say, where I got through 41 books in the year. Today's wander was prompted by my rubbish reading, as I needed to go hand back some books to the library, because I'd managed to renew them so many times that I hit the limit on renewals. Oops. Several of them were still unread.
So, off to the Central Library for me, tail between my legs. On the way there I did my best to recreate a historical photo of Dowry Square; while I was in the area I walked under the adjacent Norman arch and poked around behind the Cathedral, and I also had a little diversion to the city centre and came back along the south side of the river, hitting some trouble with the lock gates as I finally crossed the harbour back towards home.
There's something very pleasing about industrial switchgear to me. This is comparatively modern, put in the last time the lock gates were replaced/refurbished, from what I remember, but still has that pleasingly 1950s look of good solid gear.
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Bower Ashton is an interesting little area just south of the river from me—in fact, the Rownham Ferry used to take people over from Hotwells to Bower Ashton, operating from at least the twelfth century to around the 1930s.
It's a strangely contradictory little area, with a cluster of old and new houses sandwiched in between the busy A-roads and significantly more industrial area of Ashton and the bucolic country estate of Ashton court roughly east to west, and also between Somerset and Bristol, north to south.
I've been around here before, mostly poking around Bower Ashton's arguably most well-known bit, the Arts faculty campus of the University of the West of England, but I'd missed at least Parklands Road and Blackmoors Lane, so I initially planned just to nip across briefly and wander down each in turn. On a whim, though, I texted my friends Sarah and Vik in case they were out and about, and ended up diverting to the Tobacco Factory Sunday market first, to grab a quick flat white with them, extending my journey a fair bit.
To start with, though, I nipped to a much more local destination, to see something that you can't actually see at all, the Gridiron...
(I also used this wander as a test of the cameras in my new phone. I finally upgraded after a few years, and the new one has extra, separate wide and telephoto lenses compared to the paltry single lens on my old phone. Gawd. I remember when speed-dial was the latest innovation in phones...)
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31 Jul 2021
At the end of July I went to have a look around some of the private gardens opened up by the annual Green Squares and Secret Gardens event. Sadly it was compressed into a single day this year, for various Covid-related reasons, it seems, so I didn't get to poke around too many places. I went to:
And snapped a few things in between, too. It was a lovely day—a bit too hot, if anything—and it was interesting to get into a few places I'd only ever seen from the outside, especially The Paragon and Cornwallis gardens, which are the least visible to passing strangers of all of them.
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Text Recognition Tags: Cornwallis Crescent (West) G5SG - 31.07.2021 Welome-ease teel tree to wander round the garden and woodland Comwal Crescnta home to wel er 150 u. ng in 85 h holds cangng fromente huse to mesty sin oor tats-a larcry fron the originaly olanned 31 households Itnot at the demugraphi prute whch has changed, there na cane forsuggesting that the Crescent sureetly enjoyru a perod efunerecedemad ke, cae and attention fm the pret generation of reutents, Read o. The ongnal plan pronatly by AIta Pay as tor a mplete shullew cresmtol 4hes Work begat a1791, buc akeady the gret spetidative bukdng boo of the perkidwas beginnirg e colapie resaurs become scar, lons had to ome by as finwnciers and buiders were edered boninatnd the debide wan completed wiiti the decteration of war wth France in Bding work vtopped with i tal houne in vanous states of complenn The area inust have arpeaet etroordinary to ute hom this ommentaryof R07 1do noe ecalect mone melhoy oectace westem enros of ms citwamot avofuts are so none than a wok oea d dou t gh tre sent and folng nouses n andesd Theraher meal, with loass on unfinished hauses stit beng gramed an l The Cressent then proably enjoved a hart heydaythough Alan yder's briet testory shows that many f the houses had fong untannted periods dne thied of the houses in the wntern taif atood empty at the time of the I51 census for instance, and the stuation is itle better ty L89L with fiet of the twenty three houses untenarted ind a further thres inhabited only by cartaken The problem of coure was tht many of the buidings were owned hy sentee lindhordi-some of whom tad itle interest in mntaiing them let alone imeroving propress was pite them Nan goes on to show tw y the early twmtleth contury undatian hod beyan to rake to Ang with much of ctor the Cescnt was to beame by the middle of the cntury an anw d cheap maaned odgings reachng eadr in 136 tem he oty cdund proposed to demalah itin prer to bda block of huh-e Datir Comwalh Crescont survtaed-and gadualya nee gonration of residents mode the finsl uarter of the twentieth century perkod of rapid change and runewis for the Crescent. The widespread derekction so evident in the earker part of the oury was gradualy reversed an, house by house Hat ly fat the procs of restoration and renovation changed the Crescent boch inside and mut The Garden Hdden tehind the Crestent's buidings and thigh boundary wal, the gurden is aw a surpriee to wstars. it's the best part of an acre, faces dje south and is shettered from the north-making tideal for terder plants and sun warshippers alte It consists of three laur, two of witsch used to be terns courts and the woods whih slope steeply soun to the bundary wal on Polypon Lane. Our longmt-standing resident. Myrtle Way ememten ter beng played in the tne 1950, though less famaly, one imagines, than in 1906 when the Comwalts Tenni Clit wa fanned Cornwallis Crescent (West) G5SG - 31.07.2021 Welome-ease teel tree to wander round the garden and woodland Comwal Crescnta home to wel er 150 u. ng in 85 h holds cangng fromente huse to mesty sin oor tats-a larcry fron the originaly olanned 31 households Itnot at the demugraphi prute whch has changed, there na cane forsuggesting that the Crescent sureetly enjoyru a perod efunerecedemad ke, cae and attention fm the pret generation of reutents, Read o. The ongnal plan pronatly by AIta Pay as tor a mplete shullew cresmtol 4hes Work begat a1791, buc akeady the gret spetidative bukdng boo of the perkidwas beginnirg e colapie resaurs become scar, lons had to ome by as finwnciers and buiders were edered boninatnd the debide wan completed wiiti the decteration of war wth France in Bding work vtopped with i tal houne in vanous states of complenn The area inust have arpeaet etroordinary to ute hom this ommentaryof R07 1do noe ecalect mone melhoy oectace westem enros of ms citwamot avofuts are so none than a wok oea d dou t gh tre sent and folng nouses n andesd Theraher meal, with loass on unfinished hauses stit beng gramed an l The Cressent then proably enjoved a hart heydaythough Alan yder's briet testory shows that many f the houses had fong untannted periods dne thied of the houses in the wntern taif atood empty at the time of the I51 census for instance, and the stuation is itle better ty L89L with fiet of the twenty three houses untenarted ind a further thres inhabited only by cartaken The problem of coure was tht many of the buidings were owned hy sentee lindhordi-some of whom tad itle interest in mntaiing them let alone imeroving propress was pite them Nan goes on to show tw y the early twmtleth contury undatian hod beyan to rake to Ang with much of ctor the Cescnt was to beame by the middle of the cntury an anw d cheap maaned odgings reachng eadr in 136 tem he oty cdund proposed to demalah itin prer to bda block of huh-e Datir Comwalh Crescont survtaed-and gadualya nee gonration of residents mode the finsl uarter of the twentieth century perkod of rapid change and runewis for the Crescent. The widespread derekction so evident in the earker part of the oury was gradualy reversed an, house by house Hat ly fat the procs of restoration and renovation changed the Crescent boch inside and mut The Garden Hdden tehind the Crestent's buidings and thigh boundary wal, the gurden is aw a surpriee to wstars. it's the best part of an acre, faces dje south and is shettered from the north-making tideal for terder plants and sun warshippers alte It consists of three laur, two of witsch used to be terns courts and the woods whih slope steeply soun to the bundary wal on Polypon Lane. Our longmt-standing resident. Myrtle Way ememten ter beng played in the tne 1950, though less famaly, one imagines, than in 1906 when the Comwalts Tenni Clit wa fanned
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.
This is the current plan to replace the caravan park
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Text Recognition Tags: BALTIC WHARFI NEW HOMES FOR BALTIC WHARF Hew the propesed deveinpmemt cend oek frem the Flating Harter WHAT IS PROPOSEO FOR BALTIC WHARF? WHY DO WE NEED MORE NEW HOMES? Goram Homes, Bristol City Council's housing company, has partnered with Hil to propose transformational plans for Baltic Whart This would provide approsimately 165 new homes, including 406 affordable. It is widety acknowledged that the curent housing crisis has led to the under provision of housing and particularly atfordable housing within Bristol. Although much is being done in the City to address the crisis, there are key issues with affordability, rough sleeping, and lack of social housing Bristol currently has over 13,000 famlies on the affordable housing register and a further 710 people in temporary accommodation. The aim is to create a vibrant destination on the Floating Harbour with homes, retail, restaurants and commercial spece, one that is well connected to local walking and cycling routes, seamiessly integrates with the historic setting and capitalises on the waterfrort setting with expansive views across the lamous Bristol townscape. Comparing house prices in Bristol to those in other Core Cities in the decade between 2008 and 2018 indicated that Bristol had the highest average housing costs of all the Core Cities in this period, and also the highest percentage Increase - over S6, compared to a UK average increase in costs of just over 32 The site is the Boltik Wharf Carian Club, The site is owned by Bristol City Counci and as part of the overarching ambition to deliver high quality homes, this site has been identified as a site capable of providing bomes for Bristal. GORAM HOMES 出Hill Goram Homes was founded in 2018 as part ol an initiative from Bristol City Counci, wich the ambition to increase the provision of nea hemes in the city and to meet affordable housing requirements without compromising on build quality Goram Homes is a subsidary of Bristol Holding Ltd, HIl is an award-winning 5 star housebuilder, creating a range of beautiful and awardwinning new homes across the south of England. They are a leading partnership developer, delivering distinctive and award-winning new homes, having been named Housebuilder of the Year, medium and large, in 2018. which is wholly owned by Bristol City Council Goram is set up to deliver mised tenure housing on a joint ventune basis and our share of profit wil feed back into the funding of council servicel BALTIC WHARFI NEW HOMES FOR BALTIC WHARF Hew the propesed deveinpmemt cend oek frem the Flating Harter WHAT IS PROPOSEO FOR BALTIC WHARF? WHY DO WE NEED MORE NEW HOMES? Goram Homes, Bristol City Council's housing company, has partnered with Hil to propose transformational plans for Baltic Whart This would provide approsimately 165 new homes, including 406 affordable. It is widety acknowledged that the curent housing crisis has led to the under provision of housing and particularly atfordable housing within Bristol. Although much is being done in the City to address the crisis, there are key issues with affordability, rough sleeping, and lack of social housing Bristol currently has over 13,000 famlies on the affordable housing register and a further 710 people in temporary accommodation. The aim is to create a vibrant destination on the Floating Harbour with homes, retail, restaurants and commercial spece, one that is well connected to local walking and cycling routes, seamiessly integrates with the historic setting and capitalises on the waterfrort setting with expansive views across the lamous Bristol townscape. Comparing house prices in Bristol to those in other Core Cities in the decade between 2008 and 2018 indicated that Bristol had the highest average housing costs of all the Core Cities in this period, and also the highest percentage Increase - over S6, compared to a UK average increase in costs of just over 32 The site is the Boltik Wharf Carian Club, The site is owned by Bristol City Counci and as part of the overarching ambition to deliver high quality homes, this site has been identified as a site capable of providing bomes for Bristal. GORAM HOMES 出 Hill Goram Homes was founded in 2018 as part ol an initiative from Bristol City Counci, wich the ambition to increase the provision of nea hemes in the city and to meet affordable housing requirements without compromising on build quality Goram Homes is a subsidary of Bristol Holding Ltd, HIl is an award-winning 5 star housebuilder, creating a range of beautiful and awardwinning new homes across the south of England. They are a leading partnership developer, delivering distinctive and award-winning new homes, having been named Housebuilder of the Year, medium and large, in 2018. which is wholly owned by Bristol City Council Goram is set up to deliver mised tenure housing on a joint ventune basis and our share of profit wil feed back into the funding of council servicel