Bristol

Hi Everybody!

Well we had a fantastic weekend in Bristol! Bristol was a place that I knew nothing about except that people there talk like pirates (well that's what Kirsty told me and it didn't quite prove to be true) and that the name Bristol sounds like gristle. So it was these two facts that I based my preconceptions of Bristol on. Which meant of course I was very pleasantly surprised to find it such a really lovely city! With hardly any gristle.

Bristol is really cool. It helped that we were staying with Nick's parents who were lovely and had a really lovely home on the edge of the water, so you could see boats going past and the excitement of the swinging bridges (they had to swing to let boats through).

We arrived Saturday night 6.30 after a longish (3.5 hours) trip down in our good wee car. Found our way to Nick's parents house to be greeted by Kirsty and Nick. It was so lovely to see them! Then we had a lovely dinner with Nick's family and shortly after that Andrew and his girlfriend Grace got picked up from the bus station.

The next morning we had Nick as a wonderful guide. He took us through this scary path:


Then up to this really lovely park. There are so many photos of the lovely water features etc but I'll save those for later. There was a big memorial tower in the middle of the park (which was on a hill anyway). And we all climbed up to to get some pretty good views despite the mist. That's me and Nick up there in this pic.


After that feeding squirrels was on the agenda. We all managed to get a squirrel eating out of our hands... Kirsty had bought peanuts specially for the occasion. They were very cute coming right up to you and grabbing them with their teeth our of your hands, then clasping them with their hands as they chewed off the shell, or ran away to bury the nuts. Here's Darren with his wee friend (just after this photo was taken Darren lifted the nut almost out of the poor squirrels reach! But the squirrel won in the end and got the nut).


We then visited a cool graveyard, looking for more squirrels.


After that we went to Clifton and had lunch before heading up for a closer look at the suspension bridge.

I skipped across it (everyone else was boring and walked!) then we went up to see the Camera Obscura. On the way Nick showed us the "Rock Slide" that everyone but Kirsty and I had a go on.


This is the tower that the Camera Obsura is in: have a look here if you want to know what it is. Also you can see in this picture a lookout cave which we walked to.


Here's a picture of me outside the cave.


We then meandered back home and watched the rugby that night.

Sunday morning we took a walk round the harbour. In this photo you can see some of the really pretty buildings and at the waters edge is where we were staying in one of the brick houses.


We walked around town a little, and had lunch at a lovely cafe before heading home and driving back to Doncaster.

It was a really lovely weekend. So fantastic to see Kirsty and Nick, and Andrew and Grace, and meet Nick's parents! Plus get to experience a lovely city!

xxx Mindy