Tagged: thoroughfare
A Random New Year's Day Wander
01 Jan 2022
I picked a fairly arbitrary reason for a wander today. Really, I just wanted to do a New Year's Day wander just to get out of the house and to set a precedent for the year to come.
My ostensible reason was to investigate what looked like a road on my map that quartered the lawn in front of the Ashton Court mansion. As it turned out, this is just a muddy footpath/desire line similar to a half-dozen other tracks nearby, and must be some kind of bug or misclassification with the mapping system I'm using, but that's not important. What's important is that I went for a little walk on the first day of the year. As a bonus, I did happen to wander down a couple of sections of new footpath, so technically I broke some new ground too, which is nice.
Which seems a bit odd, given that it's not in Hotwells wouldn't really lead there in either direction. Looks like a fairly modern development; maybe it's just one of those roads where the developers picked a roughly local name of out a hat.
Last time I walked over the top of this I noticed that there was at least a vestige of pavement along the side of the underpass, so given the quiet New Year's Day traffic I figured I'd try getting over there and walking under for the first time in my life...
The somewhat unholy trinity of the A3029, the metroBus route and the Portishead branch line. I'm not sure what anyone could do to make this view uglier. Suggestions on a postcard to the council, perhaps?
Lunchtime Reproduction (of an old photo...)
17 Jan 2022
This was basically the quick lunchtime jaunt I tried to do at the beginning of January, only this time I actually managed to get to roughly the viewpoint I'd been hoping for to recreate a historical photo of the Bristol International Exhibition.
I did this walk about a month ago, but I've been a bit poorly and not really up to doing much in my spare time, and it's taken me this long to even face processing even these few photos. Hopefully normal service will be resumed at some point and I can carry on trying to walk any roads and paths that I need to do to make this project feel complete...
We've been as far as we can go down there on an earlier wander. From the top you'd just think it led to the Hotel car park.
The Colonnade, the Rock House, St Vincent's Parade and the old landing stages for Campbell's paddle steamers. The leftover fruit of bygone boom years.
Bedminster Trip for New Walking Shoes
26 Feb 2022
I needed to buy new walking shoes—my old ones were squeaking and it was driving me up the wall—so I ordered some for collection from Taunton Leisure on East Street in Bedminster, and decided to make picking them up an official wander.
I didn't cover any new ground within my mile, but I did take advantage of the trip to take in a few interesting things just outside my normal radius, mostly New Gaol-related. Along the way there are a couple of sanitation-related diversions, including a visit to a rare manhole cover. You can hardly wait, I can tell!
At the end of the tracks is the engine shed built into the end of the M Shed museum.
Wapping Wharf was fairly busy. I didn't stop for a coffee from Mokoko or Little Victories, though it's always tempting.
Here's a first glimpse of something I'm interested in seeing even though it's just outside my mile radius.
You can see the New Gaol entrance there on the left, poking out incongruously from the modern flats, with the spire of St Mary's rising from behind it in the distance.
In Which We Begin and End with Love
05 Mar 2022
I had a lot to get done around the house, so as soon as I heard there might be a shiny new piece of street art near me, under the Cumberland Basin flyovers, I immediately decided that was all the excuse I needed to set off on a round-the-harbour lunchtime walk to get some fresh air and see if I could spot it. So, here's a circular wander that takes in graffiti, boats, wildlife and graffiti again...
Leigh Woods Purple Path
12 Mar 2022
There's a few tracks in Leigh Woods that lie within my mile and show up on my map but that I've not walked yet, so I decided to take one of my traditional big long walks through the woods on this nice crisp sunny morning.
For years—decades, even—I've been doing a similar route from my place, along the towpath to the far woods entrance, up the hill for a varied walk on one of the marked tracks and then across the Suspension Bridge to Clifton Village for a coffee-based reward. It's my default "long walk", really, and I almost always enjoy it. Today, at last, spring actually seemed to be springing, which made for some extra positivity...
There are several ways into Leigh Woods along the towpath, all underneath bridges of the Portishead branch line that runs above.
At the one before this, which is normally locked and leads into a disused police shooting range, a woman beckoned me over to where she was standing with her bike, looking through the gates. "I think I've found your best shot today," she said Sadly, the very wide lens on the camera would have made any picture of the young deer that was standing in the sunlit distance a bit rubbish, so I contented myself with a few moments just looking at the scene.
One of the things you learn as you improve as a photographer is when not to bother trying to take a photo because you can't do it justice, and to just be in the moment and enjoy it instead.
I was heading for my usual mid-walk picnic bench but I guess they're logging in that area right now, so I had to divert.
The going is normally a little firmer here. I guess that tractor's been going back and forth a lot, and the recent near-continuous rain probably hasn't helped.
I knew that bits of the Purple Path in the woods were on my map but as-yet-unwalked, so I figured I'd do the loop. I couldn't easily check any maps as Leigh Woods is pretty much a black spot for mobile data. That's one of the reasons I like it, really: you're surprisingly out-of-touch in these woodlands. A shortish walk out of the city and you're in a forest with no access to Instagram or Twitter or what-have-you.
Now to finish off the walk in my traditional way: buying something pleasantly unhealthy from one of the coffee shops of Clifton Village (I ended up in newly-refurbished Parsons Bakery for food, and the excellent Foliage Cafe for a flat white.)
A Coffee and a Curve
27 Mar 2022
I wanted to have a wander along to the Tobacco Factory Market for some shopping, and checking the map for any leftover nearby streets I noticed a tiny curve of road on the way into the modern flats at Paxton Drive that it didn't look like I'd walked down before. I wouldn't take me too far out of my way, so I decided to head there first and then across to North Street to get my groceries and a coffee...
Here we are at the tiny loop of road that looked like it hadn't been walked. It has very little to recommend itself in any other capacity.
Paxton Drive always reminds me of Blake's 7, but in fact in the episode Stardrive it's actually Doctor Plaxton's drive that's the MacGuffin.
Which then becomes North Street, my destination. I need a coffee and some lunch and some veg.
I headed here for a take-away flat white for the walk home. I may have to come here for brunch one day soon; I saw a pair of amazing looking brunch plates being delivered as I was waiting for my coffee. Looking at the brunch menu it could have been the Bubble and Bacon, and the Turkish Tagine.
Work on the New Cut, this man-made diversion of the river to allow the harbour to float free of the tide, was officially started on 1st May 1804 and finished on 1st May 1809, with something of a party:
On 1 May 1809 the docks project was certified as complete and a celebratory dinner was held on Spike Island for a thousand of the navvies, navigational engineers who had worked on the construction, at which "two oxen, roasted whole, a proportionate weight of potatoes, and six hundredweight of plum pudding" were consumed, along with a gallon of strong beer for each man. When the beer ran out a mass brawl between English and Irish labourers turned into a riot which had to be suppressed by the press gang.
At some point, the Council say that the Chocolate path will finally be repaired and I can at last add one of my favourite paths in Bristol to my One Mile Matt project.
Here's hoping.
I noticed I had a few things on my "potential wanders" list that could all be done relatively close to home, and in a fairly straight line, so I set off at lunchtime to recreate a photo of a now-defunct pub, wander behind a Spar (which turned out to be more interesting than I'd expected, but I admit it's a low bar) and spend some time browsing in Dreadnought Books before coming home via a coffee from Spoke & Stringer, a little diversion up Gasworks Lane and a tiny bit of the Rownham Mead estate I'd somehow previously skipped.
Easter Monday Gardens and Flowers
18 Apr 2022
I didn't really set out with a theme of flowers and gardens in mind for this walk. I just fancied heading up to Clifton Village to get lunch. As it turned out, though, Spring was springing, so a minor theme emerged as I started off with the graveyard flowers of Hope Chapel and wandered up to see the beginnings of the new wildflower garden at Clifton Hill Meadow.
Strategically-placed grit box, because this tight blind (hence the mirror) zig-zag is hard enough work without a sheet of ice on the corner on a winter morning.
I thought I'd come and see how the wildflower garden was getting along. It's its first year, after a crowdfunder last year raised nearly £2000 to buy seeds, plug plants and signage.
A Swing of the Plimsoll Bridge
24 Apr 2022
I was originally going to head over to the Ashton area to see if I'd missed any bits around the football stadium—and also to grab some lunch from the Tobacco Factory Market—but in the end I got a little distracted by having accidentally chosen exactly the right time to see the Plimsoll Bridge swing on one of the first busy days of Spring, where a lot of pleasure trips tend to head out down the Avon (and possibly the New Cut) from Hotwells.
In the end I mostly snapped that, and just a couple of photos from the Ashton area where I grabbed some lunch but didn't do any new exploring.
My first hint that there might be something interesting to look at was that the lock gates that I was planning on walking over were open rather than closed. Then I spotted the pleasure boat in the lock, just behind the descending steps from the footbridge there.
Can't spot any music or a cafe in this photo? I don't blame you. But, if you look mid-left, you'll see a circular concrete plinth where the cafe used to stand near the children's playground in the heyday of the Cumberland Basin. And behind it is what caught my ear as I was crossing the lock gates—a saxophonist is practising his scales.
I've come across practising musicians in this area before. Presumably they've come away from home to avoid annoying the neighbours (or the rest of the family!) The traffic noise covers even unmuted brass quite well—by the time I was at the other end of the footbridge, on the far side of the flyover, I could barely hear him.
Ticking Off a Pocket of Paths in Leigh Woods
03 Jun 2022
I managed to go for a wander a while ago that was meant to finish off a little tangle of paths in Leigh Woods, or at the very least finish off my wandering of the Purple Path there. And I managed to miss doing either of those things through some kind of navigational incompetence.
Today I woke up with a bit of a headache, feeling a bit knackered as soon as I dragged myself out of bed, but at least with the energy to realise that I'd be better off (a) going for a walk in what looked likely to be the last of the Jubilee weekend sunshine than (b) moping around the flat until it started raining, at which point I could mope more thoroughly.
I had a look at my map, considered going to Ashton Court, but remembered that there was a music festival there today, and instead found these little leftovers of Leigh Woods and decided to have one more try at walking them.
At this point I'd just walked up the steep bit of Rownham Hill and was already too hot and a bit knackered. Still, at least it's levelling out.
Time to exit Ashton Court and head for my main target at Leigh Woods.
Right, back to Clifton Village for a coffee and some lunch to take home. I see the one way system—brought in as a social distancing measure—is still in place.