Candy's travels - The diamond tour. Lol

83 was oddly interesting.

 

Sad visions of how the past was.

 

Wtf is that other language

 

Masked ball. lol

 

The other language was Welsh. Cardiff in particular is quite a hot bed of Welsh nationalism, and as a result of the nationalists, all public signs in Wales are now in both Welsh and English. The interesting thing is that if you go to North Wales you'll hear much more Welsh being spoken as it's still the major language up there, and it has a definitely more musical tone to it than the Welsh spoken down in Cardiff.

 

I'm from Bristol originally, although I left in 1974, and didn't go back after that except to visit my mum. She worked at Filton in the 1940's on the Brabazon airliner, as she was a tracer and had to make up the blueprints from the engineer's drawings. Much later, in the 70's, I worked there on Concorde for a year till they scrapped it. That's when I moved away, I didn't want to be at the back of a very long queue of higly skilled and very experienced aerospace engineers and machinists. So I went off to seek my fortune elsewhere.

Seeing Bristol through Candy Gal's eyes has been interesting, as many of the sights from my youth are still there, but I never appreciated them as they were just background wallpaper to my life. However, seeing the way in which the docks have been gentrified has been particularly interesting. One summer (73 I think!) I worked for Bristol Corporation on a grass cutting gang, and we were based at a Corporation depot in the docks, so I got to see quite a lot of the original workings that tourists wouldn't necessarily get to see. For instance, Redcliff hill that separates the docks from the New Cut (which is a new course for the rivers Avon and Frome, that originally flowed through the docks, and was dug by Napoleonic French prisoners of war) is riddled with caves, and the Corporation used to use many of them for storage. So in the yard I got to see the cave entrances all along one side where they'd been cleaned up and regularised.

As well as being a port, Bristol is also a city of hills, steep hills, as anyone who lives in Totterdown will tell you. As such it's not the most cycle friendly of cities, as I discovered during my teenage years when I first got a bike and imagined I'd be able to go for miles. Sadly that wasn't the case, and it was only when I reached the age of 16 and could get a pair of powered wheels under me that I really started to explore Bristol and the surrounding countryside.

I was brought up at the Southern edge of Bristol, right on the Somerset border at the foot of Dundry hill, so when I got my first scooter I spent many happy hours driving out along the narrow winding lanes of North Somerset, and exploring the environs of the Chew Valley Lake (which is a large reservoir) and driving through villages like Nempnett Thrubwell and Stanton Drew, then on to Priddy Pool, before heading back up towards Winford and Whitchurch on my way home. It's all different now of course, but I'm sure that some of what I knew still remains.

More power to your picture taking elbow Candy Gal, and if you've got any more Bristol photos to post up then please put them up for us to see.

 

No more of Bristol BJ.
Although I am going again soon.