Me and my best mate are heading west in a few weeks. We’re seeing China Crisis on a boat on the Friday but have the whole Saturday too and Sunday morning.
So recommendations please. Decent pubs, food (mmm…curry,) S.S. Great Britain?
Quick Edith. My mate has been before but I’ve been meaning to go for years. Last time I was hoping to go I think I found out there was a Sausage restaurant in Bristol..
Thank you!
The Thekla aka The Old Profanity Showboat. Enjoy.
That’s the one! Any good?
Just checked it was 13 years ago when I went to see Stinkfoot (Vivian’s and Ki’s opera) so it’s probably changed.
probably not that much…
it’s a decent enough small(ish – about 400 cap, I think) venue, but it’s not especially pretty inside or anything. If the gig’s anything close to a sell out I’d advise getting there fairly early, otherwise you’ll find yourself pushed back into the bar area, where the sightlines aren’t as good and there’s obviously lots more chatter going on
The Kid’s right. I enjoyed the Stinkfoot gig, which had a healthy but not capacity crowd, but the few band gigs I’ve endured there are hideously crammed with sweatiness that drips down the inside of the hull. Acoustically it’s akin to a shipping container. It’s an experience, but not a refined one.
Went for a night out at The Thekla once, had to leave because the amount of smoke in there was destroying my lungs (this was the 90s)
Few good curry restaurants (or used to be) in Clifton Village, check out the suspension bridge too.
I’ve been living in Bristol for about fifteen years now, so here goes…
A good thing to do on a Saturday is walk around the Floating Harbour. If you start by the M-Shed (local history museum, pretty good, has a book bound in human skin on display) and keep going you’ll go past Wapping Wharf, which is a funky recent development of small businesses with lots of good food and drink options plus my favourite Bristol indie bookshop, and onto SS Great Britain. The SSGB attraction blocks the harbour walk, so you can either pay to go in (I would say it’s worth doing if you like that kind of thing) or nip round the side, have a look at the Aardman studio (you can’t go in, but you can see lots of models of Wallace, Gromit, Morph and their mates through the window), and then rejoin the harbour on the other side of SSGB to go to Underfall Yard which is a boatbuilding area (although there was recently a serious fire there, so access may still be limited). From there you can cross the harbour to loop back along the other side and finish more or less where you started, or push on a bit to Cumberland Basin to have a look at the bridge from ground level. If you do the loop it’s maybe a ninety minute walk, and that’s if you’re really ambling.
Otherwise, as Dai says you can go to Clifton, and look at the bridge from above. It’s very yah, but worth a mooch, and you can stroll from there down Whiteladies Road, which is a bit more interesting, and you can usually find some good stuff in the British Heart Foundation shop. Whiteladies Road will lead you out to the top of Park Street, which is a steep hill that ultimately leads down to the harbour as discussed above, but there’s a really nice park just off it called Brandon Hill which will give you some great views.
Gloucester Road is also worth a look, the longest stretch of independent shops in Europe or something.
Foodwise, I’m a long term veggie so can’t help you with sausage restaurants or anything like that, but I can recommend Koocha on Cheltenham Road (which is very near Gloucester Road) for Persian, or Casa Mexicana on Zetland Road (same area) for Mexican. You’ll need to book in advance for both though.
That’s all off the top of my head, feel free to ask me anything else!
Erm, that’s a lot to be going on with! Thank you.
Great summary, Kid!
The circular route that Kid describes takes you through a huge dollop of Brizzle history, and I’d also recommend it (if the weather is kind).
If you go in a clockwise direction, just over half way round the circuit you’ll be going back east towards the city centre – at this point I can highly recommend a superb little curry place where you can rest your weary legs and re-fortify yourself for the last half-mile back into town.
It’s not much to look at from outside, but goodness the food is superb, it’s quite the hidden gem tucked away a few hundred yards west of what is these days a truly epicurean ciy centre.
https://rajbaribristol.co.uk
183 Hotwells Road, Hotwells, Bristol, BS8 4SA
0117 922 7617
We did indeed go to your recommended curry house early Saturday evening after a big bimble around the water and elsewhere. Average starter tbf but both mine and my mates main courses were superb as was the naan. So many thanks!
Enjoyed the city very much and the Chinas were excellent.
I should also mention there’s a nice little pub just up the hill to the north of the Hotwells Road – it’s tucked away in residential streets, but accessible via steps up from the main road.
It’s called The Lion, and I used to live a short walk away, so it was one of the two or three pubs i considered my ‘locals’. Used to see Tony Robinson (Baldrick) in there quite frequently, as he lived somewhere nearby as well. Not sure if you’ll still find him hatching cunning plans in the public bar these days.
Sausage Restaurant? Lat time I was there we found a German Restaurant which did a fair line in sausage products, and served some of the best mash I’ve ever had
(I don’t get out much)
Can’t remember exactly where it is, we sort of stumbled across it – it was in the centre (or centre-ish) cos we found out as we were heading out of the Shopping Centre towards the City Centre.
Don’t remember the name either (which is of no help, but I think there was one in Cheltenham too)
Clifton:
https://cliftonsausage.co.uk/
I’ve just eaten but that menu has me hungry again.
There used to a small chain called The Sausage Shop. There was one in Bath, one in the Galleries in the centre of Brizzle, and possibly a couple of others.
Thank you @dai!
On Saturdays, there are often market stalls under the Watershed, on the opposite side of the water to the M-Shed. Arnolfini Gallery has a very good art-related bookshop. Go up Clare Street and Corn Street to the Nicholas Market. Stalls up the street. Decent vinyl record stall inside, plus some excellent food; the naan bread wraps at Matina are superb, the pulled pork stand (like Grillstock was) very good. Broadmead is patchy, Cabot Circus full of identikit redevelopment shops. There’s a Rough Trade record shop in Nelson Street, not far from Nicholas Market.
Did they knock down The Galleries yet? I heard that was the plan and my last visit was pretty dispiriting
No, is still there. Think whoever owns the ghastly Cribbs Causeway mall owns it now. Was ok when it first opened, but goes through spells of direness. I only ever go in the Waterstones there now.
Well Cribbs Causeway killed it. I used to work nearby so I confess that I did visit it on occasion, mainly to go to Marks and Spencer (for food)
Cribbs is another nail in the Galleries’ coffin certainly. The other flaw is the car park – there are oodles of floors, but the issue is the horribly narrow up-ramps, built at a time before everyone was being sold over-sized vehicles and pick-up trucks, as if this was Texas. I reckon several hundred quid’s worth of new alloy wheels are ruined every week in there. Mrs. Foxy’s Toyota Yaris is the right sized car to have when we very rarely go there, getting my Subaru estate up six or seven floors (past all the folk who park there all day for work) with the rims intact is just too much stress. I could use the Cabot car park on the edge of the centre and walk half a mile further, but then I’d have to look despairingly at all the identikit shop fronts that line the Cabot Centre mall – the same depressing bunch of failing retail businesses that populate almost every shopping centre in the country it seems.
An old friend has a thriving family business that has recently taken a lease in The Galleries, and he’s told me that the demolition of the place is definitely still on the cards, which ameliorates the rents that can be charged. As his business has its own dedicated customers who will move with him wherever he is based in the city centre, he’s enjoying the location whilst he can. The redevelopment, while inevitable, isn’t happening any time real soon.
Price of car parking too, free at Cribbs
Point of order- if you’re talking about Wanted, the second hand record shop that used to be in St Nicks, it’s now outside on Corn Street.
And I definitely second Matina, amazing place!
The Galleries demolition is supposedly next summer, but I’ll believe it when I see the bulldozers and not before.
We last went about a month ago, and there was only the one s/h record stall in the market, on the same row as Royce’s Rolls (home to Goat Cheese Box, which I suspect is the working title of a Steven Wilson lp) next to the t-shirt stall, on both sides of the aisle. The other two that were further down were gone. Looked to be all a bit sad past the s/h books.
Son is at uni there at the moment so we have enjoyed several restaurants on visits, by far and above the most memorable was Paco Tapas on the waterfront that has a Michelin star. We did lunch – I think about £40 a head – which is truly amazing. If you go get a table from which you can see the open kitchen.
All of the above are good recommendations.
Very good curries at Dev’s Kerala on Gloucester Road.
My 2 favourite city centre pubs are the White Lion and the Bank Tavern – which, coincidentally, both have hazardous trips to the Gents after a few pints.
Niche tourist attractions are John Wesley’s New Room and the Georgian House Museum.
Lastly, while you’re walking round the Floating Harbour, seek out Banksy’s Girl With A Pearl Earing.
The Bank is my favourite spot for a post-work pint. I enjoying looking at the pictures of the Queen on the wall and then the copies of the local radical paper lying around and pondering the contradiction.
The Three Tuns just past the library is another excellent city centre pub, and I also like the Gryphon, which is the central metal pub.
We put our ‘seen that’ cynicism aside and went out to Filton at son’s request for what is now called ‘Aerospace Bristol’. There’s a nice little aircraft museum, but it’s very much an amuse bouche. For Concorde. What a requiem for the futuristic dreams of the mid-twentieth century it is. A thing of extra-ordinary beauty, you can walk round it and – crucially – go inside. If you have any interest in such things it is unmissable. A fair way out by public transport, but not far in the car.
Can also recommend the Bristol 10k which we did last year. Interesting closed-road course.
There’s a Concorde at Duxford, too, when Freddy is passing nearby on the A14.
Prototype Concorde 002 is near us, at Yeovilton. You can go in that one, too, though its mainly filled with racks of test equipment.
Concorde at Manchester Airport too, of course there you have to pay homage naked.
I love Duxford. Great day out.
I don’t love the A14 despite its majesty though I will admit recent improvements have made it more bearable.
I want to go and visit Bristol now. That walk that Kid D described sounds wonderful.
There really should be a website for British towns and cities where locals can provide guides like this. Maybe there is. Nothing sponsored just good local advice.
Don’t forget to visit the “secret” Victorian-era camera obscura in a bunker in Clifton Downs!