20th June 2005 – Bristol and Gloucester
I had heard that Bristol city centre would be a nightmare to navigate, so instead we decided to find a place to park up and do some walking. This turned out to be a much better way (although parking in an NCP was a bit costly) and spent a good amount of time looking about Bristol. There were two places on the agenda: the Clifton Bridge, and the camera obscurer observatory – both, we found, to be located next to each other.
Strolling through the city, I found it to be a really nice place. Large expanses of parks and greens dotted around with large terrace houses around the outskirts. The city centre was extremely busy at lunchtime, both with cars and pedestrians. I nearly got run over by a motorcyclist as he attempted to slow down but went through a red light. The university is split into numerous separate buildings dotted around the city, but within 5-10mins walking distances. It felt like the nice parts of a miniaturised London. We did find another second-hand bookshop which I’m sure Nav will talk about soon.
We made it to our destination and went into the observatory first. It is a building set on a hill, within which is a contraption that uses light, mirrors and magic to present the viewer with a magnified image of the surroundings. You can rotate the view 360-degrees and see enlarged images of the activities going on outside of the building. Clifton Bridge and part of Bristol town were clearly viewable, but other than that there wasn’t much else. Still, it was pretty amazing, as it was like using a telescope but with a much bigger (and consequently easier) viewing area.
We also walked across Clifton Bridge (designed and partly built by I.K. Brunel) although underneath was a sorry looking river – it was more like a river of mud and the banks looked the same too. I don’t know whether they can still use it to transport things in and out of Bristol, maybe it was low tide? But there wasn’t any activity.
Finally, we headed to Gloucester to visit the cathedral (it’s all Morton seemed to do in his travel book). We looked around but not much else. If I remember correctly, there was some singing practice going on – that gave a pretty amazing feel to the place too. The way the sounds resonant through the building without distortion – I was thinking whether back in the days during the building if they understood about acoustics, because the sounds produces were pleasant to the ears.
We made our way out of Gloucester to Tesco to pick up food for the evening. In doing so, Nav bought a bunch of grapes and found a unique grape shaped as a flower head. It’s currently sitting on the dashboard, next to my Chesil Beach pebble. Have a look:
Whilst we were driving to our camp site (near the River Wye, south-east of Hereford), Nav had the idea of putting a webcam on the car roof to video the travelling – this seemed like a fun idea, so hopefully we might be able to get this sorted at some point. We were supposed to drive over the Wye Bridge found in Ross-on-Wye, but unfortunately took the wrong turning within the town and headed away. We couldn’t be bothered to turn back, so headed onwards to the campsite. Seems like we’re beginning to loosen the shackles of Morton’s destinations now – always a good thing.
On a final note, I found that the seagulls in Bristol crowed in a manner that sounded like they were laughing – it was extremely disturbing. It was even worse when there was more than one seagull.
-- steven
Strolling through the city, I found it to be a really nice place. Large expanses of parks and greens dotted around with large terrace houses around the outskirts. The city centre was extremely busy at lunchtime, both with cars and pedestrians. I nearly got run over by a motorcyclist as he attempted to slow down but went through a red light. The university is split into numerous separate buildings dotted around the city, but within 5-10mins walking distances. It felt like the nice parts of a miniaturised London. We did find another second-hand bookshop which I’m sure Nav will talk about soon.
We made it to our destination and went into the observatory first. It is a building set on a hill, within which is a contraption that uses light, mirrors and magic to present the viewer with a magnified image of the surroundings. You can rotate the view 360-degrees and see enlarged images of the activities going on outside of the building. Clifton Bridge and part of Bristol town were clearly viewable, but other than that there wasn’t much else. Still, it was pretty amazing, as it was like using a telescope but with a much bigger (and consequently easier) viewing area.
We also walked across Clifton Bridge (designed and partly built by I.K. Brunel) although underneath was a sorry looking river – it was more like a river of mud and the banks looked the same too. I don’t know whether they can still use it to transport things in and out of Bristol, maybe it was low tide? But there wasn’t any activity.
Finally, we headed to Gloucester to visit the cathedral (it’s all Morton seemed to do in his travel book). We looked around but not much else. If I remember correctly, there was some singing practice going on – that gave a pretty amazing feel to the place too. The way the sounds resonant through the building without distortion – I was thinking whether back in the days during the building if they understood about acoustics, because the sounds produces were pleasant to the ears.
We made our way out of Gloucester to Tesco to pick up food for the evening. In doing so, Nav bought a bunch of grapes and found a unique grape shaped as a flower head. It’s currently sitting on the dashboard, next to my Chesil Beach pebble. Have a look:
Whilst we were driving to our camp site (near the River Wye, south-east of Hereford), Nav had the idea of putting a webcam on the car roof to video the travelling – this seemed like a fun idea, so hopefully we might be able to get this sorted at some point. We were supposed to drive over the Wye Bridge found in Ross-on-Wye, but unfortunately took the wrong turning within the town and headed away. We couldn’t be bothered to turn back, so headed onwards to the campsite. Seems like we’re beginning to loosen the shackles of Morton’s destinations now – always a good thing.
On a final note, I found that the seagulls in Bristol crowed in a manner that sounded like they were laughing – it was extremely disturbing. It was even worse when there was more than one seagull.
-- steven
posted by Steven | 12:45 pm
1 Comments:
Ali (my better half) recently moved down there and works in the City Museum down there and is forever talking about going to the camera obscura... however we always pick the days when it's shut. D'oh.
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