Tagged: thoroughfare
Cliftonwood and Clifton Village Lunchtime Stroll
14 Dec 2020
The lunchtime walk has been feeling a bit of a chore lately, especially as I only have an hour and have to keep a mental watch out for my "bingo" point or risk being late back. Today I went for a deliberately brief local walk and got home in time to have lunch on my sofa rather than while I was back at work.
It's interesting filling in the gaps in my Clifton Village knowledge, especially starting to "see" the bits I can't see, the negative spaces. The size of both Fosseway Court and the Bishop's House gardens (check out the latter on Google Maps for an idea) are both something I've noticed by just getting to know the areas around them. I may also have to walk into the driveway of the very well-hidden Nuffield hospital to get an idea of how big it is.
None of those are anything compared to the trick of hiding the gargantuan public school that is Queen Elizabeth's Hospital so well that I keep on forgetting it's there, until a glimpse of it from somewhere like Lower Clifton Hill reminds me about it, of course...
Queen Elizabeth's Hospital is not, of course, a hospital. That would be too simple. Founded (like Christ's Hospital) in the 16th century—1586 to be precise—it was and remains an independent school.
I'm always surprised how easy it is not to notice this giant grand building, set back and screened off by a tall wall along most of its border along Jacobs Wells Road, and backing onto the park at Brandon Hill.
I think when I first arrived in Hotwells, it was sort-of-officially St Andrew's Churchyard Walk, or Lime Walk (those are pleached lime trees), but Birdcage Walk, which I think was more of a nickname, is what shows up on Google maps now. Given that St Andrews itself was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1940, I suppose there's less of a landmark to hang the name on these days.
Edit to add: I eventually discovered that the original Bird Cage Walk was the path across Victoria Square, adjacent, and what it used to look like, which makes the name make a lot more sense. I think it's only reasonable that the name migrated as Lime Walk looked more like a birdcage, and the Victoria Square path less like one.
Drained Basin
15 Dec 2020
On the down side, I got to Bedminster and found long enough queues at both Mark's Bread and Hopper Coffee that I gave up on the idea of buying a drink and a pasty (from the former) or a mince pie flapjack (from the latter.) On the up side, I got to take some pictures of Cumberland Basin being drained and sluiced out, part of its regular maintenance cycle.
As a regular walker here, I just head for the spiral staircase up to the Plimsoll Bridge and cross that way if both lock gates are open (though of course you still have to wait if there's a bridge swing, too.) However, the spiral staircases are narrow, tall and annoying if you have to carry a bike. Here the cyclist is chatting to the lock operator, presumably finding out how long he might have to wait.
Gardens and Cottages
17 Dec 2020
I think the cute little Duncan Cottage was my favourite bit of this wander up the hill to get coffee and a pain-au-raisin from Twelve, though I did enjoy gently musing on the public and private gardens of Clifton, inspired by a closer pass than usual to Royal York Crescent's garden.
I managed absent-mindedly to clear my GPS track before saving it, so this hand-created track-log may cause me problems in the future. I suppose we'll see.
Coffee
18 Dec 2020
Another work lunchtime, another expedition to get coffee, but not down any new road. The walk around the haroubourside was nicer than usual, though, possibly because the day was dull and rainy, which stopped the most boring bit of the walk also being crowded.
The most boring bit of the walk is the bit where you can't go through Underfall Yard, closed due to Covid-19, so have to divert through Avon Crescent to the bit of Cumberland Road where there's just a narrow pavement next to a high wall on the one side, and the railings next to the river, where there's no pavement so you generally don't get close enough to it to see much. There would be another option, the Chocolate Path, if it hadn't fallen into the river last year, but the repair work following that landslip is currently making things even worse by forcing a stretch of Cumberland Road into a traffic-light-controlled single-lane system. This means that the narrow pavement is hard to escape as traffic could be coming past right next to you in either direction.
So, narrow, boring, plus it's not just my natural introversion that's causing me not to want to be forced into close contact with other people at the moment, of course. Maybe this will become my go-to coffee place on rainy days, just because there are fewer people on the streets.
Only a couple of photos today, and none of the boring bit, because I didn't know I was going to want to talk about it here until I got home!
To Bedminster
19 Dec 2020
Despite a mild headache, I enjoyed this wander over to Bedminster. The light was lovely, especially toward the end. I always enjoy the view down the streets south of North Street at this time of day/year, with the distant hills backdropping the Victorian terraces.
I have to think that if you need a specific parking place marked out for your signal engineer, it might be an indicator that your traffic lights aren't terribly reliable.
Coming Home in the Dark
19 Dec 2020
A nice walk home in the dark early evening—we're only a couple of days away from the winter solstice—found me getting a bit lost in Southville as I tried to knock a few new streets of my list. Happily getting lost in Southville at this time of year is in no way unpleasant, and just lets you look at more Christmas lights, really.
Solstice Rain
21 Dec 2020
Despite the weather, Sarah and Vik and I wandered around Ashton Court a bit as the sun rose. Not that you could really tell. Sadly, the bit we wanted to watch the sunrise from was closed, because people hadn't been treating the deer with appropriate respect. Ah well, at least it was some exercise.
The yellow is the lights of Ashton Gate Stadium. I know nothing of football or its stadia, but it seems a bit odd to leave them on all night.
I went to have a peep at the giant sinkhole that's opened up in Canynge Square—ironically, having recently discovered the gardens were public I'd had the (triangular!) square on my list to re-visit for a few days, but now there's no entrance to the gardens due to the danger. The area was well fenced-off for safety, but I tried to get a couple of photos from behind the barriers.
I also explored the area around Camp Road, an real melange of architectures, one of the most mixed-up areas I've seen in Clifton, in fact, and confirmed my friend Claire's suspicion that an earlier snap of a sign from Manilla Road was in fact for a fire hydrant. Nice.
Though those are technically setts rather than cobbles, I think. Not that it makes any difference to the average person.
Saint Vincent's Spring
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.
Even on a fairly quiet day, you can take your life into your hands trying to cross the Portway. It's remarkable short on crossings given the number of people you see trying to cross it.
My historical research took a wander underground recently, partly inspired by the Canynge Square sinkhole, partly by St Vincent's (Ghyston's) cave and its tunnel to the Observatory, and I was surprised to find that there might be an intact tunnel from the Bristol Port Railway and Pier still just sitting there under Bridge Valley Road. A quick search turned up this recent video by an intrepid explorer, so it's definitely still there.
I went looking for the entrances today, and definitely found the south entrance, at the start of the Bridge Valley Path, the footpath that starts with steps at the bottom of Bridge Valley Road. It's easy to miss if you're not looking for it. I think I've figured out where the north entrance is, too, but it was getting dark at that stage and the Portway was still busy enough that crossing the road was still the normal nuisance, so I thought I'd leave further explorations for another day.
Despite its looks, this is neither of the two footpaths actually called the Zig Zag (the Zig Zag itself, closer to town, and the New Zig Zag, further out.) This is in fact the Bridge Valley Path
I didn't cross the road to check—it was still quite busy on the Portway and would have been hard to dash across. However, I turned out to be right on later walks; this is the hard-to-spot place where you can cross the road and walk beside wall you can see to the concealed entrace to Portnalls Number One Railway Tunnel.
You can barely make it out in the picture unless you know it's there but theres actually some decaying old steps and a handrail to help you up there from the kerb of the portway, roughly a fifth of the way into the photo from the left-hand side.