Tagged: uk
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.
I have since worked out how to use the milk vending machine, and very nice milk it is, too.
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 never need to walk down Polygon Road or Dowry Road. I couldn't say I've not been down these streets at all before the One Mile Matt project, but if I have it's been vanishingly rare and so long ago I don't remember it.
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.
There are yet more plans to turn this pub into yet more flats. I heard from a few different people that the owner has a habit of renting it to people but making them responsible for repairs, which normally turns out to be a bad deal for them as the place is falling apart. Of course, I've only heard that side of the story from the renters. I've experienced it in a few different forms, and in some of them it was a truly excellent local pub.
Up until the owner retired a few years ago, this was one of those great combination Chinese/fish & chip takeaway places, and I used to enjoy everything from the crispy chilli beef to the cod & chips.
A bethel ship was a kind of floating church; it would moor up near other ships and the sailors could board it for worship.
From what I can see in the National Archives, the Trinity Rooms was owned by Holy Trinity Church, which makes sense. I don't know what it's curently used for, though my guess would be that it was sold off and has been turned into flats.
I don't spend a lot of time in pubs, but if I had to choose a "local", this is the one I would choose. Welcoming, interesting, and often to be found with a nice fire burning in the winter. After the last time some fool drove their car through the front wall (this bend on the Hotwell Road appears to be a magnet for bad drivers), the boarding up was decorated with the bonnet badge of the offending vehicle, a Toyota, if I remember correctly.
I've walked along the Hotwell Road on the other side of this wall a thousand times—possibly ten thousand. Never seen this side of it before.
When the commuter ferry was still a thing—the council subsidy was cut in the wake of the last global recession—I used to wander through this little alleyway all the time to wait at the ferry stop at this little inlet for the boat to work. Happier times.
In which our intrepid hero levels up.
Quite a line-up. I'm afraid to say I've only read the obvious writer here; I've just popped Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber on my "to-read" list to try and make up for that, but it's quite a long list right now.
I keep on thinking there might be a quick way to Greville Smyth from here, but I think the only shortcut is up that muddy slope to the staircase on the left. And it's quite steep and very slippery-looking, so I've never tried it.
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.
Just a quick wander up the hill to get a flat white from Twelve. I really enjoyed the spooky mannequin (?) in the window.
The one nearest is an AirB&B-style rental and looks lovely inside. This is the kind of quirkiness I might aspire to.
Many a time have I wandered down this little cut-through that joins Saville Place and the Fosseway. A shortcut through the Polygon starts me off, then it's pretty much a straight line up through to here and on to Queen's Road.
A little retirement housing block sitting at the end of a private road at the end of the Fossway. I've never wandered up and seen it before, though I've walked past it a thousand times.
I'm not sure what's going on in this fanlight on Richmond Terrace. Maybe it's space for a lamp?
A rather more wide-ranging weekend wander with Sarah and Vik, taking in some mock Tudor bits of Bedmo (I should note that I've subsequently been corrected to "Bemmie", but I'm an outsider and have been calling it "Bedmo" for short for decades...), a chunk of Ashton, a path up Rownham Hill called Dead Badger's Bottom(!), The Ashton Court estate, a bit of the UWE campus at Bower Ashton, and some of the Festival Way path.
I have no idea how anyone managed to smack this street furniture so hard, or what direction they came from to do it. It's a pretty straight 30mph road right there, and this is only one side of the dual carriageway. Never seen so much as a near-miss there.
That a BMW came a tad too fast out of Clifton Vale, lost it completely and trashed the main control box for the traffic lights. It took them quite some time to fix it. I'd imagine his insurance company is getting quite the bill...
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.
Must be going through some hard times at the moment. I've been in a few times since I used to live at Baltic Wharf in the mid-nineties, and it's always been a slightly edgy-but-nice local pub that's reasonably welcoming of strangers, too. Plus it's a well-worn stop off for people on the way home from the footy.
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.