Tagged: tree
Bedminster
31 Oct 2020
Starting up close in Hotwells with a few bits around the Cumberland Basin flyover system, I walked to Bedminster and back on Hallowe'en, including finding some excellent decoration work.
Not many people want to get from one side to the other here, and those that do normally just cross the road; it's normally fairly quiet.
I may have used these steps, a few hundred metres from my house, at some point since I moved in, 21 years ago, but I don't remember doing it.
I like the way I can sometimes make something that seems pretty out of the less-attractive bits of the Cumberland Road Flyover System
Not sure I've walked along the flyover here. Have I ever seen the Cumberland Basin from this angle before?
The spike of land with the dockkeepers' cottage on it has been cordoned off for the last couple months as I write this (on 4 Jan 2021; I'm processing my backlog.) Back in October you could wander up to the end unimpeded.
I don't normally do HDR photography, and I still find this looks a little unnatural, but hey, it was just an experiment.
Royal York Crescent
02 Nov 2020
I've taken a lot of photos of Royal York Crescent over the years. This time I walked right to the dead-end bit at the far west corner and found a plaque to the Empress of the French. Call me hard to impress, but among the scientists, novelists, architects and artists whose plaques litter the rest of the area, that seems quite minor claim to fame.
A gated community, apparently. There's a few of these little enclaves in Clifton, often hidden "around the back", as mews always were, I suppose.
I enjoy walking along Royal York Crescent enough that it's a frequent diversion from my quickest way home
Local
03 Nov 2020
A very local exploration today, but there are still bits of the near field that I never need to walk down, so it didn't take me long to find somewhere I haven't been in a decade or more, the little enclave of smaller Victorian houses around Oldfield Road and Sandford Road. I'd really like to live in one of those houses, but I doubt I could afford it.
The Rose of Denmark, there, trying their best to ply some kind of trade during the lockdown.
I imagine it got more use when the GP surgery down the road was still open. Dr. Ring retired a few years ago, and couldn't find anyone to take it over, more's the pity.
I'm pretty sure there's no angle to get a good snap of Grenville Chapel from without using a drone.
Baltic Wharf and Marina
04 Nov 2020
You never know what you'll find when you go for a walk in Bristol. This gorgeous Mustang was in the Marina car park. Nice. I also surprised myself by getting a good photo of The Hand (to give it its full title, Green Hand of a River God, by Vincent Woropay. Thanks, @mfimage!)
I can't recall walking around this side of the Plimsoll Bridge pivot before, for no other reason than habit, I think.
Morning Mist
05 Nov 2020
I spotted the fog and decided to go for a morning walk rather than a lunchtime walk today. It was cold on the Portway, but it was worth it. Most of my One Mile Matt photos are "record shots", but it's nice to get the chance to do something a bit more artistic.
Very Local
06 Nov 2020
It's surprisingly easy to overlook the giant Wesleyan Grenville Chapel—now converted into flats—if you've lived here a while. Other sights that seem to slip from my memory include the modest Ashton Avenue, a tidy terrace of little houses on a road that presumably gave its name to the Ashton Avenue bridge.
Muffed for winter, I think!
To prevent the engine running cool in cold weather (and to improve the output of the cabin heater) all 2CVs were supplied with a grille blind (canvas on early cars and a clip-on plastic item called a "muff" in the owner's handbook, on later ones) which blocked around half the aperture to reduce the flow of air to the engine.
There is no view of this chapel that isn't obsured by something, I think. Nice tree, mind. It's flats, now, of course.
Rear seating area at the under-flyover Lockside restaurant (The Venturers Rest, and Popeye's Diner as-was, as well as being Sid's Cafe in Only Fools and Horses.)
I keep on hoping this will be broken down so I can make a terrible "that doesn't auger well" joke, but so far I've been disappointed.
Little Clifton Village Details
09 Nov 2020
I like The Paragon as a terrace, especially the bowed porches. On the other side of the road, a house attic has a stone lion surrounded by rocaille leaves, according to its listing.
I also love the detail of the arrows in the wrought iron of The Mall's balconies. Today I discovered Westfield place, a road I'd never encountered that runs up to the rear of the Coronation Tap. (It's a famous local cider pub, but I've only been in a couple of times. I'm more of a beer man.)
There's a private garden; from Google Maps it looks like it's mostly around to the right of here, behind a wall. It abutts the back gardens of Prince's Buildings and Windsor Terrace, I think, so might even have a way out onto Prince's Lane, or did have at some point in the past, before everything got quite overgrown back there.
Plimsoll Bridge Swing
10 Nov 2020
I went to grab a coffee from Imagine That's little horsebox by the marina, completely forgetting that they don't open on Monday or Tuesday. On the plus side, on the way back I was in time to watch the Plimsoll Bridge swinging for a tidy little yacht.
Presumably from the removed steam enthusiasts' railway line that used to come all the way here between the Chocolate Path and Cumberland Road
I's amazing how many non-buses you see driving down the GUIDED BUSES ONLY bit. Most of the seem to manage to stop before getting stuck in the guided busway on Ashton Avenue Bridge, at least.
Still a new enough figure on the local horizion to draw my eye. I wonder whether this shipwreck will be salvaged, gradually dissolve into the Avon or be let off the leash by passing vandals...
Doors and walls, closed paths and chalk
11 Nov 2020
I'd love to walk the Chocolate Path again at some point, but it's been closed since it started falling into the river. Still, on this wander to get a coffee I walked down a road I'd not normally use and found a door dressed up as a wall and another door that had been bricked up for real. Odd.
I also found a lovely bit of art on one of the Cumberland Piazza pillars on my way home.
So, there's a side door that looks like bricks, and a main entrance that clearly was a door and is now very solidly bricked up.
Clifton Village: Jesus and the Tympanum
12 Nov 2020
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.
According to the history page on its website, it's been everything from the private residence of the wealthy nephew of a shipping agent who had a hand in the slave trade, to a Protestant nunnery and a Catholic school, St Joseph’s High School for Girls. It's now residential.
This is opposite Grove House, but I'm wondering if it might be a remnant of the adjacent Cornwallis House having been a Catholic girls' school or a Protestant nunnery. All I know is that I've walked past the end of this road a thousand times without knowing how close to Jesus I was.
Cornwallis House's extensive private garden, with the back of York Gardens serried at the top.
A formidably beardy cricketer of yore, widely considered one of the greatest players in history.
