Bristol

On my first weekend in England, the 3rd of March, I visited Bristol. The main reason I came here was to catch up with a friend who is living in England at this time. Together we explored the city. Mostly we walked around Bristol, looking at all the sites, and stopping by cafes for food and coffee. I really liked Bristol, it was very pretty and had a certain charm to it. I didn't actually end up taking many pictures as photography was not my focus while here, but there is enough that I wanted to share some in this post.

There were quite a few old buildings that had tall pointy sections to them, such as the steeples of churches, or this clock-tower that I assume was once an old gateway. In the first image I wanted to contrast the old tower against the more modern building that was decorated with that huge artwork.

We walked from the town centre down to the river and followed it along. In this image I loved those pastel coloured houses. Together with the boats and river, they pointed to that church steeple.

I believe Bristol was once a centre of industry with a large port, that maybe is still in use, but I don't think it is as big as it once was. We walked past the port area and there were all these train tracks in the ground that I imagine would have once been used for industrial purposes.

We followed the river for a while and found a lock. The water on one one side of the gate was higher than the other. While maybe not the most photogenic, I found this piece of engineering interesting. We crossed the river here, but then had to jump a fence to continue, as there wasn't any gateway through the fence. I would have been worried that we were in a restricted access area but we saw other pedestrians walking here as well, so I don't know why there wasn't any better pedestrian access.

We walked to the Clifton Suspension Bridge that was situated a little downstream form the town centre. This picture was actually taken after we passed the bridge where there was a park, but I wanted to show it to you first as the viewpoint here of the bridge is better than on the other side.

We crossed the bridge in both directions to explore the local view points. I was particularly happy with this picture looking back towards the other side of the gorge and I loved how you could see all the geological layers of strata on the cliff face.

From the viewpoint we could see the Clifton Observatory situated on the hill in a park. We would later go to explore this park and that is where I took the first picture I showed of the bridge.

A couple more pictures of the views from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The left image is looking downriver, the right upriver and back towards Bristol. Once we crossed the bridge and explored the park with the observatory, we walked back to Bristol by a different route.

Some flowers were starting to bloom with the approach of spring. I have been seeing daffodils blooming all over England, they were the most prevalent at this time. I always loved seeing these happy little spots of yellow. Here we walked past a whole cluster of them with an interesting building in the background.

I found these small statues quite interesting, depicting birds of prey having just captured their meal. The quality of the casting was really good and I liked how well they captured the action of the subject. These statues were in a garden we walked through next to the university.

As we came back to Bristol, we saw more really cool buildings and here is one of them. I unfortunately don't know much about it but it very much has an old imposing vibe to it.

One of the final places we checked out was a street called the Christmas Steps. It was a nice alleyway that started with lots of steps going down. The further down we went, the narrower the lane became. I took the above image looking up the alleyway from where we had walked.

We walked back to the river and the Castle Park, in the centre of town, towards the end of the day. This was a very nice view of the river with the buildings reflected in the water.

Overall Bristol was a lovely city and I was really glad I had a chance to explore it. There was certainly much more I could have photographed or uploaded here but sometimes just a few highlights is enough.

Thanks for reading – Edward

Written 19th of March 2024

Please comment below if you have any questions or thoughts on any pictures.