Posted by Early Saturday morning departure from London’s Paddington; destination: Bristol upon Avon.
Objective: walk around, have lunch with my cousin John, who at the time was a visiting Professor at the University of Bristol, and then return to London.
The train was fast. A group of youngsters in their early 20s next to me were talking about their experience doing voluntary work in Somalia. Some were thinking of going back. I liked that. It gives life a different perspective.
As the route map shows, we went by Swindon. I got to know Swindon in the early 1990s, when I was working in England, and had associated it woth the Honda car factory. This factory is now due to close on 2021. Times change.
I did not know it, but I heard about it when I got there.
Bristol upon Avon in the UK, was a prominent port in the transatlantic slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. More than half a million enslaved Africans were traded by Bristol merchants.
It almost sounds like a story that never happended. But it did. The world has changed a lot since then. Overall, I think that it has changed for the better. I know that this is a “feel good” type of statement, but so be it. Survival is in addition to all else an emotional struggle.
This is a short report on a short visit that took place on the 16 November 2013. All photographs were taken by me, unless stated otherwise.
Walking from the rail station to the old center of the city, there is a bridge. This row of houses provides the background to the view on the left. I like the subtlety of the colours, tone. It matches the greyness of the sky, and somehow it betrays the existence of a muted exhuberance to be expressed some time in the future.
Bristol was also active in corn trading.
The “Exchange” is a historic building that was previously used as a corn and general trade exchange. Today it houses offices and the administration of St. Nicholas’ market.
The clock was first installed in 1822. A second minute hand was later added to show the time in London as well as the local time in Bristol;the red minute hand shows Bristol time and the pink minute hand shows Greenwich Mean Time . This became necessary following the arrival of the railways, which required a standardised time for timetabling around the country, known as railway time; Bristol officially adopted railway time on 14 September 1852. The city is 2º 35′ west of Greenwich, so when it is noon in Bristol by old local time, it is just after 12:10 p.m. in London by standard time.
The whole area of the Exchange in the old city has been transformed into a big market area with shops and stalls.
John is the pieminister in the photo. The shop is still there, in St. Nicholas’ market, just checked it on Google maps. In reality, John is an Associate Professor who teaches geology at the Australian National University in Canberra. He specialises in the geochemistry of economic minerals.
The Bristol Sausage Shop was there in 2013, but it is no longer. The product is a commodity that can be found everywhere in England. Given that a sausage is easy to make and store and costs very little, the margins are very low. I am not surprosed that the nice shop no longer is.
Bristol is a port city. It could not afford not to have a statue of Neptune. It could have been a bit bigger. Also, I think that there is a sensitivity around it, something soft and vulnerable, which does not fit with the image of the God who rules the Seas. May be the sculptor caught Neptune off guard.
Every major city in the UK seems to have its Hippodrome. Which literally means Horse Racing Track.
The most famous Hippodrome I know of existed in Constantinople, the Capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (later known as Byzantium). It was the place where people would go to have fun and forget the miseries of life. On occasions, they would also fight each other.
There were two major teams, the Blues and the Greens. Their rivalry often became mingled with political or religious rivalries, and sometimes riots, which amounted to civil wars that broke out in the city between them. The most severe of these was the Nika riots of 532, in which an estimated 30,000 people were killed and many important buildings were destroyed, such as the nearby second Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine cathedral. The current (third) Hagia Sophia was built by Justinian following the Nika riots.
Today it is a square named Sultanahmet Meydanı (Sultan Ahmet Square) in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with a few fragments of the original structure surviving.
Going around town, I run into a lady selling handmade soap and other toiletries. I bought some soap and face cream, and still have the tin box with me.
Banksy is an anonymous graffiti artist based in Bristol. The blue and beige blobs are the result of vandalism. Since 2013 the painting has been attacked again.
Following our short walk around town it was time for lunch. You can read all about it (and a little more) in the article I wrote back in 2013.
Unfortunately the restaurant is no longer in business. They closed down in the Spring of 2020 when the first UK lockdown was put in effect, and the proprietors decided not to reopen.
If you are interested in places that no loger exist, you might want to have a look at the article I wrote on “Osteria di Camugnone”.
On the way back to London I caught a “special” train that was returning from Cardiff, where they were playing a tournament Rugby. In the carriage there were a lot of passengers with flags of Argentina. They were all asleep.