A welcome shift in the jet stream has brought back the clear blue skies and freezing temperature of December but it’s well worth it to be free of the rain.

We’ve got a few more days in Bath and last week we’d seen a lot of notices at many of the historic sites informing tourists and residents alike that parking and access would be restricted due to filming. We were intrigued!

Stepping out of our lovely warm van and it was so cold that we decided Merlin would need her very fetching puffa ski jacket.

We walked into the Royal Crescent to find it bustling with activity. Trucks, tents and cranes on one side of the road were juxtaposed with horses, carriages and actors in bright period garb. In the middle was a flurry of people with headphones and clipboards running in all directions. We overheard one of the runners telling a friend that this was the first day of filming on location and it was all pretty much chaos.

The production was in fact Netflix’s Bridgerton Season 3.

Watching all the activity we thought it must be pretty difficult to book an outdoor location like this and hope that you get the sort of weather needed plus we doubted a lot of the gear would work so well in the heavy rain we’d had.

It’s also amazing how many people and how much kit is required to film something like this on location. It must cost a fortune! We’ll have to see if we can borrow someone’s Netflix when it comes out to see if we can see the scenes we watched outside No.1, The Royal Crescent.

Hovering around for a while, it looked as if filming was finishing for the morning and the actors were all headed off to lunch in a big tent, so we wandered into the city to look for some ourselves.

Searching for a dog friendly pub or café, we found The Salamander which was full of both character and local ales. Excellent.

The next day, as Sally was working, me and Merlin wandered back to see if there was more filming going but a bit like Christmas on January 5th, everything had gone.

Brunel’s and Banksy’s Bristol

After a lovely week in Bath, we were off to Bristol. Neither of us can remember spending much time here before so it should be a great place to explore.

As a Mechanical Engineer, I’ve long admired Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his amazing engineering projects and he has a close connection with the city. Sally’s dad had reminded us that the SS Great Britain which was built in Bristol, is now a museum in the harbour and the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which is built largely to Brunel’s design, crosses high over the River Avon here.

It ended up being a short but eventful drive from Bath to Bristol. Firstly, getting out of our little home for the week was strangely tighter than it had been getting in, or at least that’s my excuse for getting the angles a bit wrong, and we added to our collection of ‘adventure stripes’ on Beatrix’s side. Having negotiated a few small residential streets we were off on the A4 and looking forward to our next destination. Navigating around Bristol though, we had a sudden shock as the council have recently (Nov 2022) introduced a clean air zone and there was no way we could avoid it. Uh oh.

Sally checked up and it looked like we were going to have to pay £100 for our 10 minutes in the clean air zone as Beatrix was unsportingly classified as an HGV. Not the welcome we were hoping for.

Undaunted, we carried on to our campsite and checked into Parsonage Farm, which has a lovely rural setting in Long Ashton to the south west of the city centre. Although there is a bit of road noise, it’s only a few miles walk across the Ashton Court parkland to the Clifton Suspension Bridge or on towards the Bristol harbour.

We chose to go for a longer walk with Merlin and check out the park and bridge first. It was a good plan as the weather was glorious.

The bridge was fantastic and is one of those experiences where the photos don’t do it justice.

Originally designed and started by Brunel in 1831, work stalled for a number of reasons and it was not completed during his lifetime. After his death in 1859, it was decided that it would be a fitting memorial to complete the bridge and after some changes to the plans, it was finished and opened in 1864.

The towers were designed in an Egyptian style, which was popular at the time and were originally going to have Sphinx’s on top. and, interestingly, the chains that support the roadway came from the Hungerford suspension bridge in London, another Brunel project, which was replaced with a new railway bridge.

Construction was made by first bridging the gap with ropes, then attaching wooden planks across the ropes and finally a travelling dolly was used to bring sections of the metal suspension chains out. It must have been incredibly dangerous and the workers must have had a head for heights as it’s a dizzying 100m down to the river below.

The first modern Bungee jump was made from the Clifton suspension bridge.

As we walked over, it did occur to me that it would be a great location for Bungee jumping but I have to admit to feeling a few butterflies in my stomach. The walkways are on the outside of the bridge you see and almost the first step from the tower takes you out over the gorge. Looking down, the road and river seem like a loooong way down and there’s just a little bit of movement under your feet as the bridge reacts to the traffic trundling across.

As a working bridge, we were in amongst the daily commuters and we noticed no-one else seemed to be having a ‘butterfly moment’ as they were all engrossed in their own worlds so perhaps the experience wears off as you become used to it. Nevertheless, we decided to take a sit down in the sunshine with a latté and a cake before making our return.

Saturday morning was cold and a thick fog had descended.

Taking a bus into town, we had a good wander through a Saturday market with a particularly excellent vintage map stall that I narrowly managed to avoid buying things we don’t need from.

Following the river around to the docks led us to Wapping Wharf and Spike Island. We walked down to Brunel’s ship the SS Great Britain which was famously the first iron steam powered ship to use screw propellers and was, for many years, the largest ocean going ship in the world.

Alas, it was quite expensive entry to the ship and the museum doesn’t allow dogs so we had to make do with a glimpse of the ship in her dry dock and then we walked on.

Just behind the ship’s dock, although seemingly hidden from many of the tourists walking around trying to find it, is Banksy’s Girl with Pearl Earing. It’s the first Banksy artwork we’ve seen in real life and I’m pleased we got to see it in his home town, allegedly, but it’s sad that people feel the need to graffiti over it. Still I guess that’s the nature of the medium.

Despite the cold weather, our campsite was the perfect place for a fire.

We’d got some firewood from our previous stop and this was the perfect excuse to use my Christmas present from Sally, an axe! There isn’t a photo of me splitting the logs to make some kindling partly because Sally was convinced I was going to lose a finger and secondly because ‘Axe wielding maniac’ didn’t make a good blog photo or title.

Thankfully, all fingers intact, we were able to settle in for an hour to enjoy the sun going down and lights coming up over the city with a warm fire, a glass of wine and some toasted marshmallows.

We do need to apologise to the van that was stopped downwind of us though as the fire did smoke quite a bit. I blame wet wood rather than poor fire making technique but either way, if you’re reading this, we hope you didn’t end up smelling of smoke.

Wishing you a happy evening,

Sally, Toby and Merlin