Tagged: tree
Underpass
25 Nov 2020
A quick lunchtime jaunt for coffee. I've often wondered about the dots on the wall of the underpass. Apparently they're not intelligible Braille. Maybe it's Marain :D
Given that it's on an unwalled bike shed, I doubt it's there for insulation. The CREATE centre my just have it there as an example of what an eco-friendly roof can look like, though.
One of the other sides of this clock is very broken. At least these two show the same time, even if they're wrong. By my calculation, this broken clock is right six times per day.
At least someone's still watering the plethrora of plants that are arranged in Spike Island cafe's windows.
I don't think I ever crossed this bridge on foot before starting my "One Mile Matt" project.
I really must try another long-exposure with ND filters here; it looks very strange with the water made artificialy still like that, and I enjoy the effect.
A swinging footbridge, designed by Brunel, but not quite as famous, or these days as functional, as its counterpart in the distance.
And Back Down the Hill from the Flu Jab
21 Nov 2020
This is my return from getting my annual flu jab at Christ Church, as explained in more detail in my wander up the hill.
I don't think this is exactly a public right of way. But I started so I tried to finish without getting the police called on me by worried residents
This is now the Bristol School of Dancing. Their website says:
Built in 1893, it stands in the garden of 20 Vyvyan Terrace and it is rumoured that it was once a Swedish diplomatic building that contained a gymnasium. This is probably why on either side of the main entrance the words “Swedish Gymnasium” are carved.
Don't know what the JMJ is all about. Seems to be part of Cedar Care Homes (this is all behind their grand head office on Clifton Down Road, Mortimer House), but it's hard to tell for sure.
Up for the flu jab
21 Nov 2020
A trip up the hill to get my winter flu jab. I'm not sure I really needed it this year, what with avoiding Covid—I haven't had so much as a sniffle in more than a year—but seeing as they offered... Instead of the doctor's surgery on Pembroke Road, they'd taken over Christ Church, presumably to give more room and ventilation for the necessary social distancing at the moment. As usual, it was their typically efficient operation, and I was in and out in about three minutes.
On the way there and back I snapped as much as I could, but I wanted to be home in time for the first online Times Crossword Championship. As it turned out, I needn't have bothered, as the technology at the Times couldn't keep up with the demand from competitors, and their system just collapsed under the weight of page-views. They tried again the day after, and it collapsed just as badly. Maybe next year...
This wander is split into two parts, as I turned my tech off to go into Christ Church for my jab. The walk home can be found over here.
This was meant to be the day of the first online Times Cryptic Crossword Championship. Sadly the Times's web servers let them down, so the event was a washout, and I dashed back from my flu jab to take part for no good reason, as it turned out.
The destination for my wander today. My doctor's surgery branched out into Christ Church to give them more room for socially-distanced administering of the flu jab. Fast and efficient as usual.
Avoiding the Accounts
26 Nov 2020
I took the day off my day job to do my accounts—or at least do enough bookkeeping to send them to my accountant. I hate doing the books. I woke up late, tired and with a headache and decided to bunk off for a walk around Cliftonwood, Clifton Village and Clifton instead, taking in a couple of good coffees along the way. Thanks, Foliage Café, and Twelve for the flat whites.
More Cliftonwood
05 Dec 2020
Back to Cliftonwood for a wander that included some of the belle views of Bellevue Crescent and other bits of the easternmost part. Highlights included watching someone bump-starting an elderly Nissan Micra in the narrow confines of Bellevue Crescent.
The Gridiron and Bower Ashton Part Two
03 Dec 2021
On my last wander, to Bower Ashton, I was intending to knock Blackmoors Lane off my list "to-do" list, but got a bit diverted. I also took a little look into the history of the Gridiron, once a cheaper alternative to dry dock that was nestled just south of North Entrance Lock.
Today I had to go to send a parcel off somewhere, so I decided on going to the North Street Post Office via Blackmoors Lane. I didn't have much intention of anything else, but as luck would have it I walked out both at low tide and also as some lockkeepers seemed to be having a bit of a training session, and one of the more senior people was (a) happy to answer a few random questions on the Gridiron and (b) actually knew a lot about it, as Gridiron maintenance had been one of his jobs, more than twenty years ago...
There were various people on the other side, I got the impression it was some kind of training session, perhaps. Later I'll have a quick chat with the man in the high-vis jacket over there.
In the meantime, I do always enjoy seeing the giant gridded lock gates uncovered by a low tide.
This used to be a view of the Gridiron, the structure I mentioned on yesterday's wander.
I got curious and went back to ask one of the lockkeepers about it. As it turned out, he knew lots about it as he'd previously been responsible for cleaning it! More about that when I come back (including a historical photo of a boat on the Gridiron for some context) as some of the things he told me needed me to retrace my steps for some more photos.
First, though, we'll nip over to Bower Ashton and North Streeet for a quick bit of shopping and to knock Blackmoors Lane of my "to do" list.
The delights of the Bower Ashton roundabout. Here's a picture of it under construction in the 1960s from the Bristol Archives. Don't tell me I don't know how to show you a good time.
Some of the houses along here are definitely 1950s, as you can hear in this oral history, where Eileen Pimm describes the process of watching the house she still lives in being built in 1957.
Although we're heading towards the trafficky roar of the A370, it's still more of a subdued hum from here, and you could almost convince yourself that you were on the outskirts of a little town in the country.
Bigger than Sunday's nearby semi, today's is a four-bedroom (it's the left-hand house) and has just sold for £725,000. It all looks very well-put-together and modernised throughout, mind.
Opposite Country Gates, which is the rather aspirational name for the office block there.
Out of sight to my right is Ashton Park School, which accounts for quite a few things that look like roads on the map, but which aren't public and which I'm not going to wander down.
As usual around here, I want to go that way but there's no crossing and no pavement, so we'll head back through this little green and head for that bridge you can see that spans the left-hand lane here.
I mostly went out to hang out with my friends Sarah and Vik in Bedminster, but along the way I thought I'd take a closer look at something a little nearer home: the last crossing point of the Rownham Ferry.
That reminds me; I must re-read Iain M Banks's Use of Weapons again. In the novel he used the name Size Isn't Everything for one of the Culture's General System Vehicles, a spacecraft approximately 80km long... In the Culture, spacecraft are sentient and Culture ships choose their own names, often ironically.
He we have something of the opposite size of craft.
You don't often see Entrance Lock cycle at this kind of tide, but a little boat like that doesn't need a lot of water in the river to manoeuvre.
Yes, okay, it's quite the challenge to spot the hand-made historic artifact in this picture. In the next pic I'll zoom in a bit.
If you were following this route you'll have noticed I just magically took a shortcut through a bunch of houses. That's because I've elided the bit of the route that goes to Sarah and Vik's place and stays there for an hour or two.
Inflating in the field behind Ashton Court mansion, by the looks of it, the usual venue for the Balloon Fiesta.
Getting back to the Rownham Ferry, the Ashton Avenue Bridge is one of the reasons it was closed. On the excellent Bristol City Docks website you can find a photo called "Rownham Ferry c1906 with Ashton Avenue Bridge nearly built.".
As you'll see in that photo, at low tide the Rownham Ferry was basically just a bridge made out of boats, so it probably still seemed a quick shortcut compared to walking all the way to Ashton Avenue Bridge. I imagine the foot traffic gradually migrated to the new bridge as the ferry was a more daunting prospect at high tide, from what I can gather. Also, the combined road/rail bridge would have allowed people to get the train across the river, rather than stopping at Clifton Bridge Station and using the ferry, I think.
Now the tide's lower, we can see the end of the slipway we looked at earlier poking out from the Somerset side. According this article from the Bristol & Avon
Family History Society:
In 1793 the ferry was identified as being used by many passengers to "cross the river at Rownham ferry and walk to the sweet and wholesome village of Ashton to eat strawberries and cream"
Much as I admire Sylvia Crowe's ambitious vision of her landscaping of the area the more I hear of it, I'm firmly in the camp who thinks the concrete now just looks grim and virtually anything improves it. I mean, it's not my cup of tea, but at least it brightens the dinginess up a bit.
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...)
You can't actually see the Gridiron in this photo, but I believe it's still there, under that amazing buildup of silt.
The Gridiron—one of the few photos of it can be seen on the Maritime Mud and Miasma page of About Bristol—was a cheaper alternative to putting your boat in a dry dock. It was a 200-foot long grid (there seems to be some debate over whether the grid itself is actually metal, or in fact timber; I'll have to try to find out), 38 feet wide, nestled here between the north and south entrance locks. A ship captain could sail his vessel over here at high tide, then as the tide gradually receded, the ship—up to 250 feet, as overhanging a bit was apparently okay—would settle onto the gridiron.
At that point an inspection and repair crew could make their way down to the gridiron by ladder and do whatever work they could manage before the tide rose up again.
You can still see some ladders in place, I can only presume they were there to get you down to the gridiron, but that is just a guess; information on it seems quite hard to find.
I decided to try out the three lenses on my new iPhone camera. This is the "telephoto" lens. It does a reasonably creditable job, though the phone is oversharpening things a bit and I'm not sure I like the colours much.
And here's the middling lens on the camera. Not bad, though on every shot I've taken on the iPhone so far where it's been able to see blue sky it's managed to oversaturate it for my tastes. Still, I guess they're aiming at the mass market, and the mass market does seem to like oversaturated colour and the sharpening turned up to eleven.
Not bad, and it's certainly better than not having a wide-angle lens in your pocket everywhere you go. I won't complain too much. "My iPhone oversaturates my photos. Also my wallet is too small for my fifties and my diamond shoes are pinching..."
Okay, diversion to Tobacco Factory for a flat white complete, now it's time to figure out how to find Blackmoor Lane or Parklands Road from this direction.
Trying to get somewhere around here is a bit like following the White Rabbit, except when you pop back up again there's more industrial estates and fewer hookah-smoking caterpillars.
“Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
One of the businesses on this little estate of random things is Rob Perry Salvage, which presumably explains the odd row of wrecked cars parked in the access lane.
The Babcock International Group do... things. According to their website, they're a "leading provider of critical, complex engineering services which support national defence, save lives and protect communities." That sounded a little euphemistic to me, and Wikipedia is a bit more revealing, calling them an "aerospace, defence and nuclear engineering services company". I have no idea what they get up to in Bower Ashton.