SHIP SHAPE AND BRISTOL FASHION
Day1 Monday 20th February.
Our second break of the year and we were off to foreign climes - well Bristol in England as it happens. We had some EasyJet vouchers left over from Covid times and rather than go to London, we decided we should try somewhere new and Bristol was it.
All flights start at the airport and Elain took us there, but insisted we should start the break with a drink, so we did.
The flight was on time and completely uneventful. The taxi turned up as arranged to take us to our hotel - Number 38 Clifton. The sign is a bit better than the photo, but I took that on the way back from dinner, but it suits the narrative to put it in here!
It didn't take long to get settled into the room, which was on the first floor. The bathroom was quite large and had a roll top bath overlooking the city. There were shutters that could be used to preserve your modesty if you felt the need.
The bedroom and the bed were both big and very comfortable. The view from the bedroom was over the adjacent park, which is called the Downs.
As always, I had done a bit of research for the trip. We needed dinner venues close to the hotel, for preference. Having travelled today, we wanted something informal. The choice was Bosco Pizzeria about a ten minute walk from the hotel.
The place was absolutely heaving - loud and full of happy people, just what you want in a restaurant. Well, you want the happy people and loud is fine in some circumstances.
A simple starter of focaccia, Nocallera olives, good olive oil and the best balsamic I've ever tasted. The focaccia was delightful as well. A good start.
As it is famous for pizza, I had an Emilia Romagna - Italian sausage, tomato, fior de latte mozzarella, wood roasted red peppers, pangrattato, olive oil and basil. Fabulous. Sharon had a bowl of spaghetti Fra Diavolo - pasta with a sun-dried tomato, crushed chilli, basil, mint, parmesan and pecorino sauce. Best pasta sauce she has ever had and if I could recreate it she would be the happiest woman alive. I thought she was that already!
All this with a bottle of Montepulciano and the evening was quite perfect.
On the way back to the hotel, there was an eerie misty look across the Downs towards the River Avon. That's where we going to be going tomorrow.
But, we needed a good sleep before that.
After a very good night's sleep in our big bed, it was time for more food!
We both had crushed avocado on sourdough toast, with crispy bacon, tomatoes and a scattering of chilli flakes. It was very good and we were set for the day.
It was a bit misty and cold, but it was dry.
Our first goal of the day was to go and see the Clifton Suspension Bridge. You cannot come to Bristol and not see this, at least that what all the guide books say. It was a pleasant 20 minute walk from the hotel, before the bridge, spanning the River Avon, came into view.
Here we are with the bridge and the Avon Gorge in the background.
The gorge is much more heavily wooded than it used to be. It was grazed some 200 years ago, but the cessation of that allowed scrub trees to colonise the slopes and gradually exotic species crept in and the nature of the scene changed considerably. Conservation work is now underway to try and reverse these processes.
The bridge also has a more poignant history as a popular spot for suicide. Many of these are now commemorated on large flat areas of rock nearby. The bridge itself has had barriers erected to try and prevent this from happening.
The area from where the next photo was taken from was once the site of an Iron Age fortress and settlement. You can appreciate the defensive value of being able to see for miles.
You can see a yellow railing set on the cliff side in this photo. This was once a cave. Folklore suggests it was occupied by 2 giants - Goram and Ghyston (sometimes called Vincent). The cave is also associated with a religious hermit, who may or may not have been associated with St Vincent. None of this may be true! There certainly is evidence of use of the cave from about 350AD, when it may have been used as a Romano-British place of worship.
Above the cave is an observatory and Camera Obscura. This was once a snuff factory, but following conversion to the observatory, the owner, an artist, set about cutting a shaft from the building under the ground to the cave! It took 2 years from 1835 and cost £1300.
This means we can now walk through the observatory and down through the rock to the cave, which is now a lookout.
Here is the observatory, on the top of the cliff.
Here is the narrow, steep way down through the rock to the lookout.
It didn't get any better, the further in you went. You had to go 200 feet along and 90 feet down to get to the daylight 250 feet above the bottom of the gorge.
There was light at the end of the tunnel, along with a couple of giant footprints!
Also waiting for us was an effigy of the designer of the bridge - Isambard Kingdom Brunel - one of the most famous engineers in history.
Remarkably, the bridge was his first major commission and he was only 24 when his design was chosen through competition..
That might explain why he was not the tallest engineer I have ever met.
The views from the lookout were pretty good it must be said.
It should also be said that the cave did not seem to be particularly gigantic.
Next stop was the bridge itself.
On the way down, we passed this shiny flat stretch of rock. Apparently, generations of Bristolians have used this as a free slide. I cannot imagine that happened without some mishaps taking place or without the addition of alcohol. Whatever, neither of us was going to take up the opportunity.
The bridge was a long time in the making. The story started in 1754, when a local wine merchant left £1000 in his will so that a stone built bridge could be constructed, once his legacy had accrued sufficient interest. The need for a bridge was apparent in the congestion around the city centre at the long established crossing points.
The only real problem with this was that bridge engineering had not become sufficiently advanced to actually achieve such an ambition.
By 1829, the legacy had increased to £8000 and a competition was started to attract submissions for the new bridge, which was now considered to be feasible.
In 1831, Brunel's design won from a short list of 4. Money was a bit short, which was a pity as his winning design included for some fabulous Egyptian decoration, such as sphinxes on the towers and huge decorative metal plaques.
Brunel died in London in 1859, with the bridge still unfinished.
In the following year, other engineers felt completion of the bridge would be a fitting memorial to Brunel. One of Brunel's London bridges was replaced by a railway bridge and the metal "chains" from that bridge could be used at Clifton. A reasonable price for these was negotiated and work began again in 1862. By 1864, the engineers felt confident enough to get navvies to load up 500 tons of stone in the middle of the bridge and it did not collapse. No mention is made of how much the navvies were paid for that exercise, nor whether they had a choice in the matter!. No matter, the bridge was finally opened in December 1864.
You can, of course, still walk across today. You can even drive, but that had not quite been envisaged by Brunel or the builders.
Just before the bridge started to be built, Britain was going through the Georgian era, which influenced, among other things, architectural design. Bristol has some very fine Georgian buildings and streets and our next stop was one of these - Royal York Crescent. At nearly 400 metres in length, it is reputed to be the longest crescent in Europe.
The picture below shows the effects of the window tax, which had been in place since 1696. It was designed to tax the more wealthy, on the basis that the more windows a house had, the richer the occupants. Clearly, those houses at the end of the crescent would have more windows than those in the middle. The window openings were bricked up, ready to be glazed when the tax was lifted. Many openings were left closed off even after the tax was eventually stopped in 1851.
It was certainly worth a walk along and a look at.
It is a short walk from the end of the crescent to Clifton Arcade.
This is a Victorian shopping arcade built between 1876 and 1878. I would have to say it is not nearly as good as the Victorian arcade in Inverness. Victorian Bristolians obviously thought the same and the Arcade was so unsuccessful that it was up for sale three months after it opened in 1879.
Nobody would buy it and it fell into disrepair until it was rescued and refurbished as far as possible in 1998.
Coming out of the Arcade and across a square took us to what is commonly known as Birdcage Walk. Or, at least, we thought it did. We assumed, like many others, that it was so named for the overhanging trained tree branches that resembled a cage. This form of training is known as pleaching and was often used to create shaded pathways or hedges.
In fact, ours was a common mistake. The path through the pleached lime trees is actually called Lime Walk. Birdcage Walk was the rather plain path through the square we had just walked across! In truth, the path we were on, suits the name Birdcage Walk much more.
On either side of the path were gravestones dating from the 1800's and these were being catalogued by a local volunteer, who we chatted to for a little while. Many of the inscriptions on the tombstones were decaying to the point of being illegible. So, whilst a record of all the names existed, the further details of the lives, occupations, families and the like were being lost to time. It was a fascinating place.
Not far away, but down a fairly steep road was Cabot Tower and Brandon Hill.
You can see the Cabot Tower from a fair distance, so you were bound to get some good views when you got up there.
Brandon Hill is the oldest public park in Bristol.
Cabot Tower is over 100 feet high and was built in 1897 to commemorate the voyage of John Cabot 400 years early. He (re)discovered Newfoundland. I say that on the basis that someone had been there before, but at that time, places didn't really exist until some European had set foot there.
The tower is pretty impressive and Bristol seems very proud of John Cabot, who was actually from Genoa in Italy and his real name was Giovanni Caboto. He did sail from Bristol on his voyage of discovery and claimed Newfoundland for England, leading the way for the later colonisation of Canada.
By now, we were feeling a bit weary and in need of some food and drink, not necessarily in that order. We went to the first place we saw that looked half reasonable - Browns, it was called. We soon realised it was a chain, but by then we had ordered a cold beer and Virgin Mojito, so we weren't for searching out some bijou independent brasserie. In any event, the building was lovely and the beer was cold.
We were going out for dinner later, so ordered a selection of small plates to keep us going.
Chorizo and prawns, with pangratatto, rocket salad with a chunky and tasteless tomato, fig and beetroot salad, bread and truffle and parmesan chips. All washed down with a nice Pinot Gris. It was quite nice for a chain and did exactly what we needed it to do.
'Twas but a short step to the City Art Gallery, where we saw our first Banksy of the trip - The Paint Pot Angel. This sculpture was part of a much bigger exhibition of his works that were installed overnight at the gallery in 2009. Banksy took over the museum and installed a number of street art exhibits to collide with the more traditional art within the gallery and museum. The paint pot angel is the only work that remained after the exhibition was dismantled. It is thought to signify the dissonance between classical sculpture and art and the anarchy of street works.
I would have to say that the bulk of the museum was very traditional and of limited interest. Like all museums it had a bit of Ancient Egypt. It was here that I noticed that most Egyptian tombs contained a prayer for food. Most often the dead were seeking bread and beer, which seems absolutely correct to me.
On the way out of the museum, we came across a tapestry depicting many of famous sights, people and events in the history of Bristol. Given that Sharon is currently involved in just such a project for the Highlands and Islands, we spent a bit of time looking at this.
As you might expect, it included the Suspension Bridge.
By now we were a bit knackered, so we caught a bus back to the hotel and had a relaxing hot bath with an equally relaxing cold gin.
Soon enough, it was time to go out for some more food. Our choice for today was Buenosado - an Argentinian steak house. It was immediately next door to last night's restaurant and the menu had caught our eye.
We had Padron peppers to start. They were served with a Malbec salt. I've never had Malbec salt before - it was quite pink and is, apparently, made on the premises, by infusing rock salt with wine. Who knew?
They were very good, indeed. So much so, that I might grow some this year, which is something I haven't done for two or three years.
Given we had had a reasonable lunch, I had gone for an appropriately small rib eye, with chips and some salad. You can see the Malbec salt, pink on the plate.
Happily there were more chips, but not any more salad. Sometimes you just want a steak and chips and this was a very good rendition of that.
Sharon had a fillet steak salad.
She followed that with an affogato.
It really was a good, simple meal and just what we wanted at the end of a good, long day. The staff were very good and we had time to take our time.
Day3 Wednesday 22nd February
Another good sleep, followed by another good breakfast.
Scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for me.
Sharon had granola, yoghurt and fruit compote. That is, of course, boring and so there is no photo.
We were heading down to the harbour area this morning. We had to pass the Town Hall, which is a crescent shaped, very large building opposite the cathedral. Very grandiose.
The unicorn on the roof of the Town Hall is a reference to the coat of arms of the city. The unicorns in the arms are paying homage, and, of course, unicorns only pay homage to men of virtue! I wonder if the elected members had a hand in designing the coat of arms.
The Cathedral opposite is also a big building, but it is a much better looking one.
We carried on down towards the docks area. Whilst much of the heavier industry has declined, some still remains. In those areas vacated by warehouses and processing plants, restaurants, offices, housing and lifestyle buildings have moved in. Whatever a lifestyle building is!
Of course, John Cabot left from here and here he is with Bob.
At the back of one of the largest warehouse, which is a museum, is a collection of converted shipping containers. These are now used as pop up street food outlets, bakeries, cheesemongers. A great place to wander and smell!
Adjacent to the containers is a replica of Cabot's ship, the Mathew, built in 1996, to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the original voyage, the next year. Remarkably, the replica ship sailed across the Atlantic and back for that anniversary in 1997.
Nearby, is moored the Miss Conduct. This was once a famous dining yacht in America - Donald Trump had dinner there before. It also starred in some films, However, it is now used for charitable purposes by the owners, two business-men from Bristol.
The helicopter on deck is no longer fit to fly.
We were a bit tight for time as we had somewhere to be later on, so we had an early lunch inside a dual container, which is now a tapas bar, called Gambas.
It was a bit early, so we didn't have a huge lunch, but it was very good indeed.
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After our look around the cathedral, we met up with our tour guide and the rest of our group. The guide, Simon, gave us a quick bit of history then took us off past the town hall, which I thought was old, but it turned out was completed in 1952!
Firstly, they gave some good bread, just out of the oven with some very good oil
This was soon followed with some white asparagus and aioli and some very tasty sobrasada croquettes.
Some great gambas in garlic and chilli.
Finally freshly made patatas bravas.
All really very good, especially with a cold glass of verdejo.
A real delight all round and we would have stayed longer and eaten more at a slower pace if we had had the time.
We had a pre-booked entry to the S.S. Great Britain.
The Great Britain was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who, if you were paying attention, you will remember, also designed the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
The ship was launched in 1843 and was the largest passenger ship in the world until 1854. She was the largest ocean going ship to be powered by a screw propellor and the first to cross the Atlantic, which took 14 days. Unfortunately she ran around in Ireland in 1846 and in 1852 she was sold for salvage and repaired. From that year she carried emigrants to Australia until 1892, having been converted to all sail in 1881. She was then retired to the Falkland Islands where she was used as a warehouse, quarantine ship and coal hulk until she was scuttled in 1937.
Remarkably, 33 years later, benefactors paid for her to be raised and repaired sufficiently to be towed back to Bristol in the dry dock where she was built 127 years earlier. She was further repaired and is now the biggest tourist attraction in the city.
From the dockside it looks as if the ship is floating in the dock, but, in fact, there is only a few inches of water in a glass frame giving that illusion. You can actually go under the waves and walk around the whole ship on the floor of the dry dock. An amazing experience and so completely different.
The screw propellor is a replica, but you get a good idea of the size of the machinery needed to propel this ship through the water.
You come up from the dry dock and can then go round the whole of the inside of the ship. Remarkably, for me, the yard arm from the sailing ship era, was made of iron and not wood!
It was a nice day up on deck.
The first class deck was very nice - with cabins arranged around the deck area.
The bath is, apparently original and was unable to be removed from the ship by the Falkland Islanders! It doesn't have the view that our bath at the hotel!
The dining area used by 1st Class emigrants to Australia was much nicer than the facilities available for those a bit further down the pecking order. There was very interesting talk based on the diaries of some emigrants, which really brought to life the difficult circumstances that some of them travelled under.
It is not often I include a photo of the gent's toilet in these little stories, but the urinal in the public toilet was exceptional.
As was the cistern.
We hopped off the boat and walked around the dock to get to another Banksy work - The Girl with the Pierced Eardrum.
This was, of course, a take on Vermeer's Girl with the pearl earring. The earring in this case is a burglar alarm - hence the pierced eardrum. Brilliant.
A nice end to our tour of the docklands.
The sun was going down when we got back to the hotel.
Dinner was at a restaurant that is within a retirement housing complex! A bit strange, but the food was not liquidised, indeed, it really was very good. Almost every dish had cheese, so the restaurant was called the Cheese Platter.
I started with a local cider - it being a big thing in this part of the world.
We shared starters of Manchego cheese and chorizo arancini with an arrabbiata sauce and smoked haddock and Applewood cheese croquettes with homemade tartare sauce.
Both superb.
Sharon had grilled hake with a herb and cheddar crust, samphire, coriander pesto and new potatoes. I had chicken Schnitzel with fried duck egg, gremolata, gruyere and kale. Another pair of very fine dishes.
I decided i could manage pudding, so I had a chocolate and hazelnut delice, with honeycomb and clotted cream ice cream. Fabulous.
A great meal with a bottle of Picpoul and if I have to go into a care home, then this is the one for me!
A great day.
Day4 Thursday 23rd February
Our last full day in Bristol and we started with a leisurely breakfast.
We both had eggs Benedict today and very good they were, too.
Another walk into town. Today we had booked a walking tour, so we set off in plenty of time, allowing us an opportunity to look at a few things before the tour started.
This was the front of the University of Bristol Music Department, a neo-classical building with a Corinthian portico from 1842. Very nice and symmetrical it is.
We also took a bit of time to wander more closely along the front of the main council building.
We were to meet our guide at the main entrance to the Cathedral, so we took the chance to go inside and have a good look around - it certainly was worth doing - and it was free! John Betjeman thought so too, describing it as having one of the best cathedral interiors in Britain.
I never cease to be amazed and appalled at the same time by churches and cathedrals. They are fantastic, almost always very old, buildings, dedicated to something that can't be seen or proved. At the same time they represent such an enormous and costly undertaking in a world full of poverty and want. They tend to have been built when most people around them lived lives that could be brutally short and often filled with horror and disease, living in unfit houses and surroundings. The contradictions are staggering, but the buildings have a calm beauty.
.The cathedral started out as an Augustinian Abbey in 1140, so it has been a place of worship for nigh on 900 years. It is well and truly on the modernist road now, with women being ordained as priests in the Church of England for the very first time in this cathedral in 1994.
Of course, such egalitarian thinking was not always the way of things. There was a memorial to a Mary Carpenter, who was praised for her compassion towards the unlovely children of the streets and oriental women with grievous lots. This was despite the claims of private duty and the tastes of a cultured mind.
Like all cathedrals, Bristol has some fabulous stained glass windows. These were often paid for by men (and it was nearly always men) who wanted to ensure a glorious after life no matter what they had done during their tenure on earth.
This is the Edward Colston Memorial Window. He was a very rich man, who used some of his wealth to endow many schools, halls and the like to the city of Bristol. He lived from 1636 to 1721. The one problem with all of his beneficence, was that a huge amount of his wealth derived from his ownership of slaves. He did not think that selling people into slavery was incompatible with his Christian faith. I think he was mistaken and all the good deeds he did for Bristol probably didn't ensure him admittance to heaven.
You may recall that his statue was toppled from its plinth in Bristol and then dumped into the river following a Black Lives Matter protest in the city.
All through the cathedral there is evidence of the struggle that modern Bristol has to come to terms with the past, particularly in relation to the huge wealth that merchants accrued due to the success of the port and the role it played in slavery. It clearly is a matter of some controversy and difficulty for the Church and it was good to see that they were making an attempt to address these contradictions.
Despite the sources of past wealth, the architecture is quite magnificent.
Another incongruous memorial was erected above this altar. It was in memory of a wealthy local landowner. One of he figures depicted in the carving was his grandson, who emigrated to Barbados in 1643 and he established a sugar plantation. The family eventually owned thousands of acres and large numbers of slaves. When the grandson of the grandson died in 1710, he left 2 estates to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts so that they might build a monastic college to provide religious and medical instruction to the 300 slaves who worked the estates. The society clearly thought this was a bad idea, because they built a school and college for white Barbadians only. When slavery became outlawed, slave owners were compensated for losing their "property". The society got £8558 for emancipating 410 slaves. It wasn't just wealthy merchants who were involved in slavery, but the machinery of the established church did too. To add insult to injury, a fine Mediaeval altar screen was destroyed to make way for the memorial!
There is nothing that illustrates the antiquity of a cathedral more than signs telling you that someone who died in 1321 was buried there.
There is a nice little garden hidden away in a back courtyard.
Then it was across the road to see the first Banksy of the day - The Well Hung Lover. Apparently Banksy pretended to be someone from the Council and ordered scaffolding and tarpaulin to be erected around this building and he made the work over the ensuing few days. Eventually somebody realised the scaffolding was there and had it removed to reveal the painting. Nowadays, Banksy uses stencils rather than spray painting directly on to walls. Stencils are quicker to use, which is, apparently, a good thing if you are street artist doing stuff that some people don't like.
The blue splodges have a tale to tell. Apparently, Banksy made the mistake of telling an audience that he was a Bristol City fan. They play in red colours. Fans of Bristol Rovers heard this and attacked the mural with blue paint balls, to match their team's colours. The council removed those that were outwith the body of the work, hence the white looking splodge to the right. They did not attempt to deal with the blue within the boundaries of the image.
From the bridge overlooking the Banksy, we could see an old pub and that was our next stop. This was the Hatchet Inn dating from 1606. It was supposed to be one of the favourite haunts of the infamous pirate Blackbeard, who was from Bristol.
The paintwork around the door of the pub was very rough looking. Legend has it that this is because the paint overlays human skin. The thought was that human skin from executed convicts was attached to doorways to ward off evil spirits.
We soon passed a wine warehouse that had been housed in a converted jail. The building has now been converted to expensive flats, which now have their toilets in old prison cells.
I had noticed that many of the pavements were kerbed with iron rather than stone or concrete. This was a relic from the days of horse and cart. Once cart wheels were rimmed with iron rather than wood, they caused significant damage to stone edging and they were replaced with these iron edges. Apparently they can be seen in other cities, including New York.
Just round the corner was the Bristol Hippodrome, which has one of the largest stages outside London. For that reason, Bristol attracts shows which might not otherwise have come to this part of the country. Laurel and Hardy played here!
This is the notorious plinth of Edward Colston's statue.
Just across the road and behind more modern buildings sits this lovely Elizabethan shop and house and the whole street and adjacent stairway are very attractive.
The house itself has an eaves feature above the shop window. Apparently people used to shelter under the eaves of buildings like this. Walls were not the thickest and you could hear what was being said inside - hence eavesdropping!
I was more interested in the cakes than the internal conversation!
We walked towards an archway which used to be part of the city walls to find ourselves surrounded by huge street art. None of it was by Banksy, but it was pretty impressive and very large. This Mother and Child is, apparently, on the wall of a sexual health clinic.
This piece is a reference to an iconic photo of construction workers building skyscrapers in New York.
An oblique nod to the paint pot angel.
A dog, looking at a stick man and we all know how dogs like to chase sticks.
This was the archway we then crossed through on what was the old city walls.
Looking back to the arch and there was a clock that had stopped.
The figures on either side of the arch are said to represent the two giants Goram and Ghyston, which I am sure you recall from the second day! Shame on you if you weren't paying attention. Apparently Queen Elizabeth the first passed through this very gate. That would be Queen Elizabeth the first of England. Despite the evidence of post boxes and the like in Scotland that are emblazoned EIIR, there was no Queen Elizabeth the second of Scotland, because Queen Elizabeth the first only ruled in England. More properly, the late Queen should have been Elizabeth the second and first - in the same way that James was the sixth and first following the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
Just beyond the gate was some more street art, depicting swordsmen, one of whom seems to have lost his head, but just has very dark hair.
This little blue face belongs to some part of youth culture that has completely passed me by.
On up from the street art was this exquisite art nouveau old printing works. What a gem!
At the end of the street, stands this church, with some very fine architectural detailing. However, what intrigued me was the reference to St Ewen. I had never heard of a St Ewen before. It appears that the church here sits on the oldest religious location on the city and there was likely a Saxon church here long before the present building, which is thought to be at least the third on the site. Anyway, St Ewen was Bishop of Rouen in 641, which wasn't yesterday. He did some good works and brokered peace between warring factions. He was buried under a cathedral altar, which was the equivalent in those times of being made a saint.
Not very far away from here is the Corn Exchange. Outside the market hall are these large bronze pillars, called nails. The seller would place his wares on the top of the nail and the buyer put down his money and the bargain was sealed - hence paying cash on the nail.
Our guide was a drummer with a band called The Gun Club, who were at one time almost famous, and he gave us a demonstration on the nail, which was remarkably tuneful.
Above the entrance to the Corn Exchange is a clock with two minute hands.
In the past, time meant solar time and not Greenwich mean time. So on the clock (which has stopped) the red hand shows Greenwich mean time at just after half past ten. Bristol time - the black hand - is about ten minutes behind. The reason for that is that Bristol is west of London (Greenwich). Bristol was not alone in this - lots of places ran on time according to solar time rather than Greenwich time. On the advent of the railways time, had to be standardised, otherwise timetables made no sense and Greenwich mean time became widely adopted and eventually became the legal time in 1880!
Nearby St Nicholas's market was surrounded by lots of different street food vendors. The smells were astonishing, but we were not at the end of the tour, so we had to reluctantly drag ourselves away.
We saw some more pirate haunts, including the pub where Robinson Crusoe became a book. Alexander Selkirk was a Fife sailor marooned on an island for 4 years. He was rescued by a Bristol boat. The captain landed back in Bristol and allegedly told Selkirk that he would take him to his local pub and he could drink all he wanted after his ordeal. He did just that and regaled anyone and everyone who would listen to his tale. As it happens one of those who did listen was Daniel Defoe and the rest is his story!
The tour ended up at the dock front, by which time we were very cold and very hungry. Back to St Nick's we went, looking for one of the vendors that had seating inside. We found Spice up Your Life, a little Indian stall run by one man and his wife. She cooked and he did the rest. There was also a seat by a radiator - perfect. Sharon had lamb keema and I had something a good deal spicier made with chicken, but I forget the name. Perfect.
It also came with a nan bread, that I cannot see how they made it in the space available, but like all of the food, it was delicious.
I hadn't drunk much beer on this trip, so we called into a nice, cosy little pub near to our hotel on the way home. I really enjoyed this beer, sitting in front of a roaring log fire. Just what a pub should be.
Can you tell I was happy?
Although it was cold, it was a fine evening and the view from the bath was pretty good.
It wasn't too long before it was time for the next, and last supper. We had chosen The Spiny Lobster for our final dinner in Bristol and we were not disappointed.
We were given some nice bread and a bowl of anchoiade to dip it in. Anchoiade is made from anchovies, olive oil, capers, garlic and mayonnaise and it is very tasty indeed.
One of the things that had sold us on the restaurant was the fact that they sold sparkling Picpoul by the glass. I had not even known that such a thing existed, but we had to try it. A revelation and exactly as we had hoped. Delicious. We shall have to source some for the future.
For starter, Sharon had crab cakes with chilli jam, pickled red onion and coriander.
I had lobster risotto with gremolata.
Both starters were splendid.
I followed up with seared tuna and salsa verde.
Sharon had the Hake steak with Romesco sauce.
We shared buttered potatoes and smashed peas.
another two very good plates of food again.
We were too full for pudding, so we wandered slowly back to the hotel for a final sleep, before breakfast and the airport.
Day5 Friday 24th February
We had booked a transfer to the airport this morning and we had a bit of time to take it easy over breakfast before that arrived.
I decided that I could not leave without trying the full English breakfast. Besides, I was unsure when my next meal might come along, so I was taking every precaution against starvation.
The transfer guy arrived as booked, and got us to the airport in plenty of time. Our flight was good and Iain picked us up and got us home all safe and sound.
I would have to say, we had no idea what Bristol was going to be like, but we really enjoyed it. There was a lot to see, and some more that we didn't get to. The restaurants and food were really good and the hotel was excellent. We will definitely go back some day.
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