Tagged: tire
My goal is walk down every public road within a mile of me; sometimes it's not easy to tell what's public. I've passed the turning for Cornwallis Grove a thousand times, but never had a reason to venture down it, and although the street signs at the end seem to be council-deployed and I didn't spot any "private" signs, it's a gated road and definitely feels private.
Gathering all the white middle-class privilege I could muster, I wandered down and was rewarded with the sight of a Victorian pump, a statue of Jesus, and from the end of the road, a view of a private garden that once belonged to a private girls' school.
The Cornwallis House history page says:
In the early 20th century the house, together with Grove House, became a Catholic school, St Joseph’s High School for Girls.
The Congregation of La Retraite took over the school in 1924, with the nuns living in Grove House while the schoolrooms were
in Cornwallis House. The headmistress was Mother St Paul de la Croix (Sister Paula Yerby). By the 1970s La Retraite High
School had around 700 pupils.It closed in 1982 and the building was bought by Pearce Homes Ltd (now part of Crest Nicholson) who developed it into 21
flats. Grove House next door was bought by the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, and was later converted into flats in 2007.
Glendale. One of those streets that's just around the corner from me, but that doesn't take me anywhere I ever need to be, so I've probably only walked up it half a dozen times in the couple of decades I've lived here.
Some days I barely notice this view, but if the light's right when I'm coming home I find it stunning.
Know Your Place recently posted a 200-year-old painting from a not dissimilar viewpoint (KYP map link), though I think that one's from further up the hill. I think the wall in the foreground of that picture is likely the curve of the Paragon garden, now fringed with tall bushes that would mean you can't get the same view these days.
A quick trip with the aim of finding a better way to Greville Smyth park and a good coffee. Sadly I was stymied yet again with the former—it turns out that you do apparently have to take a strange loop around the houses (or at least around the roads) to get to Greville Smyth any way other than my normal route, unless you're prepared to vault some railings. It may be that the disused steps from where the skater kids hang out to the flyover above might once have led to a shorter route, but it's hard to tell. The geography in the area has always confused me.
On the plus side, Rich, who runs Hopper Coffee from a Piaggio Ape does a great flat white and often has a good sign. (I collect cafe signs...)
This is one place the sign for Greville Smyth Park takes you. Presumably you're meant to dash across many lanes of busy road here.
The is the other place the sign to Greville Smyth Park takes you. That's where I just came from, damn it.
Presumably this is where you're meant to dash across the road to from the ramp that leads up from the sign on the far side.
Something of a misty start took me around the viewpoint at the end of Spike Island and then on to try to find a new way into Greville Smyth Park. I got lost.
A local walk with my friend Lisa in tow, including a coffee from the cafe in the Clifton Observatory, where I have fond memories of experiencing my first camera obscura, and cake from Twelve in Clifton Village, one of my favourite recent finds for both food and flat whites.
I find the cobblestones hard to resist, so I've probably taken a snap of this mews pretty much every time I've passed it.
This started as a little local walk with my friend Lisa, but when we randomly met my friends Sarah and Vik at Ashton Court, turned into joining them for a very long wander out to Abbots Leigh Pool. Most of this was well outside my one-mile radius but it was a lovely walk.
Came across a pipe band practising in the car park of the Avon wood project (I think)
My friend Sarah mentioned the high tide and I managed to drag myself out early, though still a little late. We nearly drowned in torrential rain, but the weather changed quickly and we ended up walking over to Bedminster in sunshine.
Actually, I don't think these ones are for sale. Channel Yacht Sales has its stock moored out front.
I think there were plans to turn the council bulding (on the right) into some kind of community centre, but last I heard they were still trying to stop the place leaking like a sieve first.
Have I got the wrong listing?
Terrace of 3 houses. Dated 1831. For the Bristol Docks Company. Coursed Pennant rubble and render, party wall stacks and slate roof. Single-depth plan. Each a single storey; 3-window range. Symmetrical houses have a rubble plinth to the ground floor cill, central doorways with pitched canopies on plain brackets to a segmental-arched doorway with splayed reveals to a plain board door.
There's definitely more than three houses. On the Bristol council map of listed buildings, this is "Floating Harbour Nos. 1-5 (Consecutive) Old Dock Cottages Grade II". Colour me confused.
A walk back from Bedminster to my place, mostly down Duckmoor Road, which I found a little dull—probably because it reminded me a little of the suburbs I grew up in on the outskirts of London—then held up slightly by some filming on Ashton Avenue Bridge. They were trying not to let the crowds build up too much in between takes, it seems, so it wasn't a long delay.
A quick lunchtime jaunt to Dowry Square, which is very close to me but, being effectively a cul-de-sac as well as a square, I've probably only circumnavigated a couple of times in the last couple of decades.
I believe the Hotwells Pine owners decided to retire, like the owner of the fish & chip shop a little further along. Asia Channel did excellent food, but had some kind of family crisis and closed down quite abruptly, sadly. The dentist on the end seems to do a good trade, and Hotwells Fabrics is still going. The one in between them and Asia Channel has been threatening to turn into a deli for a few years now, I think, but perhaps that's fallen by the wayside. Seems a terrible shame when we could do with a few more good local shops. Hotwells has definitely thrived more than this, in the past.
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.
It never look that reputable, even when it was a going concern. Converted to flats in 2001, according to the excellent resource Bristol's Lost Pubs.
In which our intrepid hero levels up.
The other way to get to Greville Smyth more quickly from there would be to go up that set of steps, but it would mean vaulting the railings, and I don't really do vaulting.
