Tagged: tree
Bank Holiday Street Art
31 May 2021
A nice warm Bank Holiday Monday saw me walk back over to Bedminster to do justice to something we glimpsed on my last wander. Along the way I spotted a couple of new pieces of street art tucked away on the south side of the Cumberland Basin Flyover system, so this turned into a micro-graffiti walk.
Apparently this is 34 Baynton Road. Looks like just a tiny, isolated house, stuck in a very odd little corner.
I imagine this derelict site would be worth quite a lot. Odd that it's just sitting there mouldering.
Set back behind the shops on the main road is this little pair of houses. All well-kept and tidy, and not quite as odd a place to be as the one that's isolated in the car park behind them, but still quite a strange location.
A Longer-than-it-looks Walk With Lisa
06 Jun 2021
The track on the map doesn't tell the whole story of this walk with Lisa around and about Clifton, Berkeley Square, Brandon Hill and the harbourside, because the batteries on my GPS ran out while we were on the roof of Trenchard Street car park, it seems. Oh well. I think I did most of the area I was interested in finishing off around the University; there were only a few new bits around Brandon Hill that won't be on the track, and I can easily do them again.
Still, technology woes aside it was a nice walk, albeit a bit warm for climbing all those hills, and sat on the harbourside watching the world go by for a while, too. It was good to see the Bristol Ferry Boats carrying people around again, especially.
I've sometimes idly wondered what this thing on the side of Richmond Heights is. I'm told by KYP Bristol (who certainly know their local history) that it used to have the name of the building on it, but the letters fell off.
This means that somewhere out there, a student almost certainly has all the letters they need to make a large sign saying "CHERISH MID THONG"...
No idea why there's a window in this wall. The wall looks a lot older than everything surrounding it, so perhaps it's just some historical vestige leftover in between bits of University development.
We're just outside my mile radius here, but Osborne Villas Looked too tempting to just walk past.
Looked a bit to me like number 16 had tilted over to the left a bit since it was built...
...and on the same lamppost, some Kill The Bill literature. That's me: bringing you the social history that Google Street View can't.
A Trip to the Library
08 Jun 2021
I had to return a book to the library—Ellic Howe's Magicians of the Golden Dawn, very interesting, thanks for asking—so I decided to pick the Central Library as my drop-off point and walk down a segment of Deanery Road that I've surprisingly overlooked so far. In any normal time I'd have been walking to work that way quite often, or heading through at the weekend on the way to do some shopping in the city centre, or for a coffee at St Nick's, but those excursions have been quite thin on the ground for the last year or so, for obvious reasons.
I've never been inside a single building on Deanery Road itself; the Library is technically on College Green and the rest is mostly student accommodation or Bristol College buildings, by the looks of things. It's a fairly mediocre street, used merely to get to other places. (St George's Road, which merges into it, at least has the distinction of several good shops verging from the practical and long-lived car radio fitters to the excellent little Dreadnought Books, sadly currently closed for refurbishment...)
After dropping off my book I came home via the harbourside, the better to enjoy the nice sunny blue skies of the day.
The last time we saw this bit of waste ground, I wondered if I was remembering correctly that it used to be a garage. Well, it's now being cleared out, and the skipful of old tyres would seem to be a clue that I was probably right...
Or rather, a bit of St George's Road. At the corner there, St George's Road actually continues down the side street to the left. The road straight ahead, on the far side of the junction, is actually Deanery Road, which is the bit I've not walked yet.
"He was known for his efforts to abolish the practices of sati and child marriage." I was aware of the awful practice of sati purely because it came up in a crossword once. Efforts to abolish it certainly seem statue-worthy.
This statue stands outside the Central Library, between it and City Hall. The Bristol connection is that he travelled to the UK as an ambassador "to ensure that Lord William Bentinck's Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829 banning the practice of Sati was not overturned". He died in Stapleton, Bristol in 1833. As well as this statue, he's buried in a fine mausoleum in the beautiful Arnos Vale cemetery.
The arch on the left is the Great Gatehouse of St Augustine's Abbey, precursor to the Cathedral; you can see the Library entrance just behind the Ram Mohan Roy statue.
Leigh Woods Solo
19 Jun 2021
I hadn't really planned to go out for a wander yesterday; I just got the urge and thought "why not?" (Well, the weather forecast was one possible reason, but I managed to avoid the rain, luckily.)
I wanted to finish off the A369—as it turns out I may still have a small section to go, but I've now walked the bulk of it out to my one-mile radius—and also a few random tracks in Leigh Woods. I'm still not really sure that I'm going to walk them all, especially after discovering today that "the map is not the territory" applies even more in the woods, where one of the marked tracks on the map wasn't really that recognisable as a track in real life... I'm glad I'd programmed the route into the GPS in advance!
Anyway. A pleasant enough walk, oddly bookended, photographically at least, by unusual vehicles. Leigh Woods was fairly busy, especially the section I'd chosen, which was positively dripping with teenage schoolkids with rah accents muttering opprobrium about the Duke of Edinburgh. I'm presuming the harsh remarks were more about taking part in his award scheme than the late Consort himself, but I didn't eavesdrop enough to be certain...
I'm not sure what's being delivered to the lock-keepers' house, but it looks like they'll probably all be a lot happier afterwards.
I took this as a comparison shot for this non-OMM photo I snapped the other night, to show how much difference the right conditions can make to a photograph :D
I don't think I've ever been next to these tracks when a train's gone down. I've sometimes seen it from the other side of the river, though. You can read a bit about the nearby disused station here; this used to be a passenger line, but it's freight-only now.
At some point I should dig back through my photos and see if I snapped this frame when it was first left locked to these railings as a full, complete bike.
I think it was at this point I decided not to bother walking alongside the road up Rownham Hill and instead divert into Dead Badger's Bottom, which is a prettier alternative. That could be a slogan for this rather mundane strech: "The road up Rownham Hill: less attractive than a dead badger's bottom".
There are some really good photos of the Cumberland Basin and Hotwells area taken from viewpoints on this hill, but the trees have long since overwhelmed the possibility of a good view up here. Don't get me wrong: I like trees, but I do rather wish you could still take photos from up here.
I suppose the thing to do in 2021 is to send a drone up and try to find the same viewpoint that way.
Shops, Hedgehogs and Cows
06 Jul 2021
I really only took the GPS and camera on a "just in case" basis, as I knew I was only going for a coffee in Greville Smyth Park along a well-trodden path this lunchtime. Still, I saw a few new things along the way, so I figured it was worth uploading the handful of photos I took...
When I passed the (then-empty) fencing back in March I wondered what this would turn out to be. I had no idea it would be a miniature nature reserve...
According to the Friends Of Greville Smyth (FROGS!) Facebook page it's a hedgehog oasis, which is rather sweet.
Dead centre of this picture is a herd of cows, though I imagine you'd be hard pressed to find them once this picture is shrunk down a bit for the web. They were more obvious to my naked eye, wandering around on the hill. You don't often see cows from town.
I thought that was part of Ashton Court's Red Deer Park, but perhaps they're diversifying...
Of course, in the old days you'd have seen plenty of cattle near here in the city. Just behind the Pump House were the cattle sheds and an abattoir that used to stand where the Rownham Mead housing development is now. You can see them in one of the pictures on the City Docks website, here.
A Cliftonwood Revisit with Lisa
10 Jul 2021
Lisa had a couple of hours to spare before going up in a hot air balloon (exciting!) so we went for a quick local walk, revisiting a bit of Cliftonwood we've seen before, exploring the secret garden I'd visited before that I thought she'd enjoy (I didn't take any new photos there) and then pushing on to another garden, Cherry Garden. Last time we passed this way, I'd noticed the gate, but we hadn't gone in as I'd assumed it was private. I'd since found it on CHIS's list of communal gardens in Clifton, so I wanted to have a look inside this time, and try to figure out whether it was private-communal or public, and possibly Council-owned, like several of the other gardens in Clifton.
We've also seen Sydney Row, Upper Sydney Street and Sydney Garages on previous wanders.
The rather tumbleodown letters remind me of the tricks played with both Fawlty Towers and Sunshine Desserts.
This was today's mildly underwhelming destination: I only realised after walking past the gates on an earlier walk and then seeing it later on the CHIS Clifton's Communal Gardens page that this was a public garden, so popped it on my list to take a second look. As Clifton communal gardens go it's small and fairly dark on a day like this, but I don't imagine many people know about it or use it, so it's appealing to me, as a generally quite introverted person, especially one who prefers shade to sun on bright days...
"Managed by local people in conjunction with Bristol City Council", confirming its status as a public space, so I'm definitely not trespassing. Good.
Someone clearly put some good work in on the gate, but thirteen years of weather has taken its toll.
Next to the Cathedral. Which I've still never set foot inside. I should probably put that on the list...
Lunchtime Zig Zag Climb
13 Jul 2021
A snappy little trip up the Zig Zag to the shops. It's a steep old route, the Zig Zag, going from just over river level to about the height of the suspension bridge (101 metres) in a compact switchback of a footpath.
I was too busy struggling to breathe to take many snaps of the actual Zig Zag (I've been trying to make it up all the way without stopping the last few times, but I've not quite managed it yet). I did at least take a few snaps either side on this quick lunchtime jaunt to fetch coffee (Coffee #1) and a sarnie (Parsons) from Clifton Village...
When climbing the Zig Zag it's helpful only to focus on where you are, rather than how far you've got left to go.
Apparently one of the reasons that collections are being missed (this lot's been on Albermarle Row for nearly a fortnight) is a shortage of drivers. There's a general HGV driver shortage at the moment, as well as a backlog of testing for new drivers.
Autonomous Vehicle
14 Jul 2021
As it turned out, I didn't manage to get a coffee on my lunchtime coffee trip, as Imagine That were briefly shut down by a Covid-19 exposure notification (false alarm, it seems.) On the plus side, my trip was made worthwhile by spotting a couple of people from the University of Bath Mechanical Engineering Department testing an autonomous body-finding catamaran, which isn't a phrase I was ever expecting to write...
Pastures New!
17 Jul 2021
Okay, not much in the way of actual pasture to be had in Bedminster these days, like most of Bristol, but I did take advantage of the current rather toasty weather in Bristol to go and sit under a tree in Greville Smyth Park to read a book for a while before firing up the GPS and taking a little detour around some back streets of Ashton and Bedminster rather than going straight to Coffee #1 for an espresso frappé. This is the first walk in a while where I've actually crossed off an entire new street (the frankly unexciting Carrington Road) as well as exploring a couple of back alleys, just because they were there, really. Along the way I spotted a few examples of graffiti of various qualities, including a live work-in-progress by SNUB23 on Ashton Road and the finished Six Sisters project on North Street.
I think I'm right in saying that that's snub_23 popping up a new piece, but I'm only really basing that off some quick Instagram research and some assumptions; I'm not exactly plugged into the Bristol graff scene and I didn't want to interrupt the conversation.
In my defence, this little alleyway/service road looked more like a road on the map. Still, seeing as I'm here...
They've not made much progress on repairing the Chocolate Path, sadly, but it seems they've at least got a budget and a green light now.
The entire New Cut only took five years to dig out, but on the other hand they had literally a thousand men on the job and I imagine several of them died. Probably have to be a bit more careful these days.
I can barely stand up from kneeling without falling over on my living room floor; I doubt I'd manage it on a paddleboard.
Some street art in Bristol is a little more primitive. Still, at least it reminded me of Liza "with a Z" Minnelli's collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys... I think she might even have got a smile out of Chris at one point, but the quality of the VT makes it hard to tell.
A Journey to the Far East
25 Jul 2021
The far east of the intersection of my one-mile radius and Bedminster, anyway. I was feeling a bit tired this morning, so I motivated myself to get out of the door by imagining one of Mokoko's almond croissants. That got me on my way, and I wandered across to Bedminster, through Greville Smyth Park, along most of the length of North Street (looking out for new Upfest 75-pieces-in-75-days artwork as I went) and then onto some new roads at the far end.
I only wanted to knock a few streets off my "to do" list, but by the time I'd diverted here and there to check out various bits of graffiti and other attractions and come back via the aforementioned purveyors of Bristol's finest croissants, I'd walked 7.4km. Not bad for someone who woke up tired, and at least I've done something with my day. I'm very glad the weather broke (we had tremendous thunderstorms yesterday), even if some of the pictures might've looked better with a blue sky. I was getting fed up with walking around in 29°C heat...
I had no idea this was part of the Monarch's Way, a modern route that tries to trace, as best it can, the path of King Charles II's escape following his defeat by Cromwell in 1651.
