A Bank Holiday Weekend in Bristol

The long weekend began on Friday morning with a bus trip across Oxford to the home of Paula’s cousin Callum.  Callum and his wife Caitlin are returning to New Zealand in June and are selling their cars.  Luckily for us, one of these was available pretty much immediately so we were off to take care of our major purchase for this trip.  The buses ran very smoothly and we soon found ourselves the proud owners of a Nissan Almera three-door hatchback.  We have nearly come to terms with its manual drive.  It is interesting; in the USA it is hard to find a manual shift car now, while here in the UK it is the automatic drives that are rarer.  No wonder so many of our Brit friends in NZ want manual shifts in their cars.

Once we had our wheels, we went back to our guest house to get our bags (we had not wanted to try carting these on commuter hour buses).  I had checked driving directions and programmed the address into our Tomtom GPS so we made it ok.  Leaving Oxford was less fun; the system was sending us down tiny little roads that would barely have qualified as driveways at home.  Of course here they are two-way streets!  It didn’t help that the first one had a delivery truck parked in the middle of it!  Never mind, we soon made it onto the M4 and were headed toward Bristol.

We made it to Saturday Cottage, where my uncle and aunt have lived for as long as I can remember, by lunchtime as planned despite a malfunction in the car which meant our Tomtom couldn’t charge.  It was lovely to see Uncle Tony and Aunty Ingrid again; the last time was six years ago at my grandmother’s 100^th birthday celebrations.  Saturday Cottage is just as I remember it so it was a delightful nostalgia trip.

The view from Saturday Cottage

After lunch we followed Uncle Tony’s instructions to The Mall, a big shopping centre, as we wanted to check out external hard-drives as a laptop backup system.  Again we managed to navigate without mishap but we got to thinking that getting the cigarette lighter in the car fixed was becoming a top priority.

In the early evening Uncle Tony took us up to visit my Nana’s memorial stone, where her ashes are interred.  This was a lovely walk and a nostalgic one.  I have never been to Bristol and not visited my Nana; I am glad to be able to say that has not changed.

On Saturday Uncle Tony and Aunty Ingrid took us to Dyrham Park, a stately home that is part of the National Trust.  So we have joined the National Trust for a year and now have books, maps and apps that will keep us busy in Britain for many weekends to come.  Dyrham Park was lovely.  We started off by walking the very extensive grounds which includes a deer park (Dyrham = Deer Home).  While we walked Tony and Ingrid shared lots of great family stories that I have not heard before; we were so engrossed that we nearly did not notice the deer!

The house itself is a late seventeenth century home and is not occupied so we were able to walk all around the grounds and the inside of the house.  The only exceptions were the chapel and orangerie as they had been reserved for a wedding.  We did keep an eye out but did not spot the bride.  She must have been very late though as they kept ringing the chapel bells – my theory was that they couldn’t possibly conduct the actual ceremony over the noise of the bells so it must have been to help the bride find her way.  

  

The grounds are very beautifully kept and it was very interesting to see the 18^th century furnishings, ornaments and paintings inside.

Sunday was a family day – my cousin Julian, his wife Caroline and their two daughters were coming for lunch.  As our repeated offers to assist with the preparations for lunch were kindly turned down, we went out to explore Westbury-on-Trym.  We safely negotiated a number of the lovely old streets and admired the beautiful stone buildings; if we had simply continued with this our walk would have taken the hour or so planned.  Of course, we saw a path leading into Badock’s Wood and our google maps implied that we could walk through this and arrive back nearly at Channells Hill, the road we needed.   We enjoyed walking in Badock’s Wood; it was quiet and sun-dappled through the spring leaves on the trees and I even spotted the occasional cluster of bluebells.  The river Trym (a creek really) ran through the middle.  Unfortunately, the path that led in the direction of Channells Hill terminated in a large steel fence.  This necessitated a scramble up quite a steep muddy hill to get back to the road.  We were not lost; we knew exactly where we were but it was a lot further from home than we wished.  Needless to say, I was a bit hot and bothered by the time we got back to Saturday Cottage.  We were not late for lunch thankfully, but Julian and family had already arrived.

Julian is just a few months older than me (something that seemed very important to him when we were children, but not such an issue anymore) so we had a great time trading a few “do you remembers”.  His daughters, Lily and Alice, are 14 and 12 respectively, and Lily at least remembered us from Nana’s birthday in 2006.  They are lovely girls so we thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them a little better.

Lunch was a superb roast beef with all the trimmings; we felt very spoilt the whole weekend but this meal was a definite highlight, followed by more catching up. 

All my Bristol family are extremely devout Anglicans, and at breakfast Aunty Ingrid had invited us to accompany them to their service at 4pm.  While it was an “invitation”, it was really put in terms that we could not refuse.  So in the afternoon, which was fine, we all walked together up to Red Maids School where the Emmanuel service is held.  While the service is especially designed to appeal to a younger congregation, and we met some very nice and friendly folk, we are not converted.  In fact we found some of the sophistry that was applied to the Old Testament reading quite disturbing.  Each to their own I suppose.

Monday was a bank holiday and we had been invited to Julian’s home at the University for afternoon tea.  We decided to spend the rest of the day exploring some of Bristol.  Uncle Tony gave us great advice about parking and we reached that without any hassle.  Our explorations started off at the Georgian House, which we thought was a lovely example of the homes built and owned by wealthy merchants of the time.  They even had a very good little exhibition about the owners’ slaves and plantations in the West Indies, which was of course a major source of wealth for such land owners in those times.

From here we walked down to Bristol Cathedral.  I had read a little about this in a book of Uncle Tony’s, and was very pleased to find that the Norman Chapter House (built in the late 1100’s) was open to the public.  The Cathedral itself is very beautiful, but it was the Chapter House I really loved.  The detailing is exquisite and the building is still used by the people of the diocese today.

Ahoy, me hearties!!

 Our wanderings from here took us along the harbour’s edge, and we eventually ended up at The M Shed, a museum of the history of Bristol.  In the main foyer is the large pirate ship used in the current Aardman film “The Pirates – Band of Misfits”.  It is just delightful, if something of a contrast to the grandeur of the Cathedral!  The rest of the ground floor is given over to an exhibit about all the boroughs of Bristol, and we spent over an hour wandering and reading.  While there is no timeline or narrative to the displays, we found them really interesting and informative.  We decided not to visit any further floors, as we will no doubt return to Bristol and it was a bit of an information overload.

Luckily we had thinking time in which to process all the information as we walked further, because our next stop was the SS Great Britain.  I had never heard of this ship before, but we learned that she was revolutionary in several ways at the time of her construction in the early 1840’s.  She is made of iron, and was huge for her time.  A sail-assisted steam-ship, she was the first large steam ship to be propeller-driven, rather than a paddle-steamer.  I could go on and on – she was fascinating!  Instead if you want to know more you will have to either visit her yourself, or Google her if a visit isn’t practical!

By the end of this, it was time to head back to our car and find our way to Julian’s house.  I think Google maps might have coped better if he lived on an ordinary street; instead, he is Warden of one of the University Halls of Residence and lives in the Warden’s House at Wills Hall.  We first ended up at University Hall (close but not quite there) but quickly amended our error.  Alice feels their home should be a National Trust house; I just about agree!  It is a grand old stone place, and the Warden’s House is actually physically part of the Hall itself.  Lily and Julian enjoyed sharing some of the history of the place with us before tea.  The view from the drawing room is gorgeous when it stops raining; Lily assured me that when the clouds are not so low they can see all the way to Wales.

The Warden's House, Wills Hall (Julian's place)

This morning it was time to leave the peace of Saturday Cottage and let my uncle and aunt get back to their normal routine.  We had discovered on Saturday that today is their wedding anniversary, so Grant managed to slip away to the village while I packed in order to get them some flowers.  They have taken such very good care of us and it has been wonderful to get up-to-date with my Bristol family.

Grant managed to fix the car cigarette lighter on Monday (it was the fuse) so we had the added advantage of GPS to get us safely back to Mark and Paula’s house today.  In fact it is really only at the very beginning and very end of the journeys so far that we have needed it, as the majority is spent on motorways.