Tagged: waterway
A Little Local Wander
07 Jan 2021
Which included a literal "local", the Pump House, to try out their shop/deli/cafe. A flat white, some apples and a New York Deli toastie. Eleven quid, mind, but the Pump House was never a cheap pub...
I enjoyed the fog, and wandering down a few more out-of-the-way back alleys and what-have-you on the Hotwell Road.
I'm thinking of getting up early and going for a morning walk tomorrow, weather-depending, but at the moment my motivation to do things like this seems to be much strong in the evenings when I'm just thinking about it rather than in the morning when I actually have to do it. But it's going to be cold, and low tide is quite early, so there's always a chance of getting some footage of the hot well actually being visibly hot; you never know...
Prince's Lane
06 Jan 2021
The International Grotto Directory website says:
Prince’s Lane might have been one of the original ancient tracks from Hotwells to Clifton, in the Avon Gorge. The site later formed part of Rownham Woods which comprised some thirteen acres. By the end of the 18th century and the early 19th century, the Society of Merchant Venturers granted to Samuel Powell a building lease, for The Colonnade (1786), St. Vincent’s Parade (1790), Prince’s Buildings (1796), and Rock House. Rock House is generally considered to be the oldest surviving building associated with the Hotwell (see Chapter 20). John Power conveyed part of the woods to William Watts for the construction of Windsor Terrace (1790-1808).
The above development of the Avon Gorge cleared Rownham Woods, and created a triangle of land on the north side of the gorge, that became enclosed as a result, by Mansion Houses, whose garden walls all entered on to Prince’s Lane. The Lane started at the bottom of the gorge, at the base rock of Windsor Terrace, and came out half way up Sion Hill. It is clearly shown as a public footpath, dotted with trees, in Ashmead’s map of 1828. Some of the gardens were quite steep in parts and therefore, had to be terraced, because of the gradient of the gorge.
I've passed Prince's Lane literally thousands of times in my life, every time I've walked past the Avon Gorge Hotel, which itself started (in 1898) as the Grand Clifton Spa and Hydropathic Institution and pumped water up from the Hot Well for its hydropathic treatments. I've never actually ventured down it until today, or at least nothing like as far down it as I did this afternoon—I may have poked my head around the back of the hotel to see the original pump rooms at some point in the past.
This was a great wander, though it does very much feel like a private road, and frankly I may have been pushing my luck a bit by winding my way between the astoundingly big back gardens of the houses of some presumably very wealthy Cliftonites, but I felt vaguely justified in exploring the history of one of the oldest footpaths in my part of Bristol...
Solstice Rain
21 Dec 2020
Despite the weather, Sarah and Vik and I wandered around Ashton Court a bit as the sun rose. Not that you could really tell. Sadly, the bit we wanted to watch the sunrise from was closed, because people hadn't been treating the deer with appropriate respect. Ah well, at least it was some exercise.
As you do. One of the fibreglass gorillas from the "Wow! Gorillas" public art project organised by Bristol Zoo in 2011. We had one in the lobby when I worked at Axa -- some were bought by corporations and displayed publically; not sure what the story behind this one being on a balcony in Clifton is.
This one is the "I Spy" Gorilla, originally sited at Slimbridge Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust, which presumably explains the decoration, created by artist Dave Bain.
Rainy Clifton
13 Dec 2020
A long walk around Cliftonwood and Clifton with my friend Lisa, taking in some of the 12 Days of Christmas display at Queens Parade, picking up a take-away coffee from Pinkmans of Park Street, and poking our heads up against the glass of SS Peter and Paul Catholic Cathedral.
Last time I visited (the triangular!) Canynge Square, I didn't venture up this corner as there was a bin lorry doing its job and I didn't want to get in the way. Today Lisa and I walked out to the very end, which pokes out onto a view of Percival Road.
Tiny Houses, Crocodiles and Views
05 Jan 2021
I didn't really intend to record my walk today, but once I was out and about I couldn't really resist taking some pictures. The sun was lovely, but it was cold...
"He liked to take a walk on a Saturday afternoon with Flora for his companion, across the bridge, pausing there to look leftwards at the spreading city far below, the tangled waterways, the warehouses, the ships, the medley of houses and trees lifted to the heights of Upper Radstowe, and on the right where the gorge narrowed, to see the river sluggishly making for the Channel between banks of glistening mud on which was reflected, now and then, the white swoop of the gulls; or, at high tide, to hear the hooting of a siren and watch the ship coming slowly round the bend. It was a scene of which he did not tire for it was never twice alike. The form, the opaqueness, the colour or absence of clouds had their way with it, darkening or lightening the trees on the farther cliff and the splashes of red and yellow rock on the nearer one." — E.H. Young, Chatterton Square, 1949
Nowhere New
10 Dec 2020
I didn't have any time to find a new place to go today, so I'm treading old ground here. I did buy a tub of duck food from Amazon last week and today I remembered to take a little bagful of it with me on my trip to Imagine That coffee, and spent a few minutes feeding the marina slipway ducks on the way back. This is a Bristol tradition I've seen other people doing many times, but never tried myself. It was quite genteel until the seagulls cottoned on, then it became something of a brawl.
On Christmas Day in the Morning
25 Dec 2020
A Christmas Day walk with my friends Sarah and Vik, taking in the shipwrecked Shadow and a hilly chunk of Leigh Woods.
Ten O'Clock Shop and Can't Dance Coffee
30 Nov 2020
I had to return a faulty AirPod Pro to Apple (there's a first-world problem!) so I just took a quick trip up the hill to the nearest UPS drop-off point, The Ten O'Clock Shop, which is famously open until 11pm. Unfortunately it's a fairly cramped little place and neither of the staff were wearing masks, so I made it a very quick drop indeed and got out of there as quickly as I could.
I grabbed a quick coffee from Can't Dance, a stall that's—as of yesterday—in a tiny converted cargo container on the edge of Victoria Square; up until this week they were running from a little trike parked in the same place. Hopefully the new premises will let them see out the winter without worrying quite so much about the weather.
I tried to fit in a few extra streets from the surrounding area on my there and back, but that was basically my wander today: a quick little shopping trip.
Fruitless Coffee Excursion
01 Dec 2020
Unfortunately by the time I got to Greville Smyth Park I was already about halfway through my lunch-hour, and the queue was too long to wait to actually get a coffee. Is that a fruitless excursion? Presumably a coffee bean is technically a fruit...
This kind of vague musing was sadly overshadowed by my delay at Ashton Avenue Bridge on the way back, where someone—hopefully still a someone, rather than a body—was being stretchered up the bank of the river, presumably having just been rescued from the water. As I made my way home the long way around, avoiding the cordoned-off area at the back of the CREATE centre and its car park, I saw an ambulance haring across the Plimsoll Bridge, siren running, presumably on its way to the BRI. I'd like to think that was a good sign.
One thing I didn't know existed until this moment: Avon Fire & Rescue Service's specialist Animal and Water Rescue Units. They "...carry specialist equipment such as inflatable rescue paths, mud lances, animal rescue strops and harnesses, and a winch..." and "...have attended a range of incidents including the rescue of a woman from a car trapped in flood water and a donkey trapped in mud".
I don't know why there were here today, but that doesn't look like an animal on that stretcher/sled thingy. It looks to me rather like they're retrieving a body from the water. The police were in attendance, too, and the whole area was cordoned off.
I know from talking to the ferry crews that rather more bodies are pulled from the harbour every year than you'd imagine from any newspaper reports you might see. I'm guessing the same goes for the river.
A long ramble, starting with trying to find the Hot Well of Hotwells and leading up the side of the Avon Gorge to the Downs and then through Clifton for coffee.
Vik and I often just stand back calling helpful advice like "please don't die!" when Sarah's off getting a picture from some liminal space or other.
