Bristol is the nearest major city to the place where I was born. This is near the area that we saw in the visit on this blog, "Gloucestershire And Herefordshire".
The city of Bristol is over a thousand years old. In the days of sailing ships, it was England's most important port. The explorer John Cabot sailed from here in 1497, and reached Newfoundland. The Cabot Tower was built to commemorate the 400th anniversary of that journey.Bristol somewhat missed out on the Industrial Revolution, and it declined as a port when the development of the steam engine brought larger ships that could no longer navigate Bristol's Avon River. But when aircraft came along, it made itself into Britain's aeronautical and aerospace center.
The following scenes of the central city begin in Bristol Cathedral. Just before we moved to North America by ship, we went for a drive. My father pointed out a structure in memory of an explorer and the ship that had sailed across the ocean, and explained that I would soon be sailing across the ocean too. The Cabot Tower is not far from the cathedral. The first of the following six images, from Google Earth and Street View, is of the Cabot Tower. The next three are of the cathedral and the last two are of the central library adjacent to the cathedral.
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide previews of successive scenes, if you wish.
There was once a castle in Bristol but it was dismantled during the rule of Oliver Cromwell and is now a park called Castle Park. I am sure that there were once more castles than there are now. Castles located in cities can be dismantled as a source of building stone when they are no longer necessary. In Hereford there is the Castle Green. The first of the following two images are from the Wikipedia article "Bristol Castle" and the second, of Castle Park, is from Google Earth.
Here is more of the central city of Bristol, around Castle Park. The first four images are from Google Street View. The first two image are the Wills Tower.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.455605,-2.5887783,3a,75y,90h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-JO1NMaB2LFE%2FV3vTD195azI%2FAAAAAAAACyM%2Fm32Tjy-9yokceo3n3pOYl06O0O96kaHiwCLIB!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh6.googleusercontent.com%2F-JO1NMaB2LFE%2FV3vTD195azI%2FAAAAAAAACyM%2Fm32Tjy-9yokceo3n3pOYl06O0O96kaHiwCLIB%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-2.015526-ya55.402412-ro1.1609286-fo100%2F!7i5376!8i2688
This is in and around the Temple Meads, Bristol's old train station that looks like a cathedral. If you see an old-style wooden ship, it is a replica of the ship that John Cabot sailed. The first image is from Google Street View.
This is in and around the Temple Meads, Bristol's old train station that looks like a cathedral. If you see an old-style wooden ship, it is a replica of the ship that John Cabot sailed. The first image is from Google Street View.
Bristol is associated with the story "Treasure Island". Robert Louis Stevenson, the story's author, had visited Bristol. The Spyglass Inn, in the story, is said to have been based on a Bristol pub called "The Hole In The Wall", which is still there today. Image from Google Street View.
The pub's innkeeper was named Long John Silver. He would leave the inn to join the Treasure Island expedition as the ship's cook. Eventually he would get a seafood restaurant chain named for him.
I noticed something strange when I read Treasure Island. Much of the story takes place in the tropics, and the landscape is described, but I couldn't see that it ever mentions palm trees.
Have you ever been to Niagara Falls? The gorge downstream from the falls resembled the gorge of the Avon River in Clifton, which was once a separate town but now is a suburb of Bristol. The town that grew on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls was thus named Clifton. The town has since been incorporated into the city of Niagara Falls, but the named lives on in the well-known tourist district of Clifton Hill.
Clifton is known for it's old suspension bridge, over the gorge, which opened in 1864. Next to the bridge is an observatory with a camera obscura. Two images from Google Earth.
Clifton is known for it's old suspension bridge, over the gorge, which opened in 1864. Next to the bridge is an observatory with a camera obscura. Two images from Google Earth.
The following scenes of Clifton begin outside Clifton Cathedral. This is not an old cathedral like Bristol Cathedral, it was completed in 1973. The first image is from Google Street View.
Here is a newer residential area, known as Hengrove. The first two images are from Google Street View.
Paul Dirac was born in the house on the right in these old row houses. This is the physicist who correctly theorized the existence of antimatter and wrote the first paper on quantum physics. Two images from Google Street View.
I have wondered if the idea of antimatter came, maybe subconsciously, from these houses. These houses are the same except that one has the door to the left and the one next to it has the door to the right. In the same way, antimatter is the same as matter except that the electrical charges are reversed. Matter has negatively-charged electrons in orbitals around positively-charged protons, and antimatter is the reverse.
To the southeast of Bristol is the city of Bath. This is a very old city that goes back to ancient times. Here is a look at it, beginning inside Bath Abbey. The first five images are from Google Earth and Street View.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.381491,-2.3586498,3a,75y,352.33h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s0hCtJU2SfH4AAAQXIi9QTQ!2e0!3e11!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D0hCtJU2SfH4AAAQXIi9QTQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D69.369705%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656
Nearby is the house at Longleat. I found my way through the maze at Longleat, formed by hedges. The moon was visible in the sky and I used it as a directional reference point. Image from Google Earth.
Nearby is the house at Longleat. I found my way through the maze at Longleat, formed by hedges. The moon was visible in the sky and I used it as a directional reference point. Image from Google Earth.
Here is a look around the house of Longleat. This is not a palace, which is associated with royalty. Longleat was built during the time of Elizabeth I, and is a home of nobility rather than royalty. The first two images are from Google Street View.
BRISTOL AND IT'S RIVER
Now let's have a look at what Bristol has done to the River Avon that flows through it. The fact that there is more than one river named Avon is a legacy of the days, more than a thousand years ago, before England was a united country. This river is usually referred to as Bristol's Avon.
The Bristol Channel has the second greatest tidal range in the world, after Nova Scotia. The Avon River was tidal, which meant a considerable difference between high and low tide. So what Bristol did, more than two hundred years ago, was to rechannel the river. A "new cut" was dug around the city and the original section of the river that passed through the city was separated and controlled with locks. The water's edge through the city thus remains constant. All images are from Google Earth or Street View.
Upstream, east, of the city the Feeder Canal diverts water from the river. The flow of the river continues to the New Cut. The river flows from higher to lower elevation and the site of the Feeder Canal was chosen so that this would be the water level in the original section of the river that would flow through the city. The Feeder Canal is the branch without the arched bridge over it. The Netham Lock is seen at right in the second image.
The Feeder Canal flows westward through this industrial section of the city.
The original river this flows through the city. But now it is controlled and not tidal. This is called Bristol's "Floating Harbor".
The new and original rivers are parallel and in some places close together. In the following image the original river is shown by the red line at the top and the New Cut by the red line at the bottom.
There are routes for the water in the Floating Harbor to flow into the New Cut when the water exceeds a certain level.
Finally the two branches of the river meet again. In the first of the following images, the Floating Harbor is at left and the New Cut is at right. The red dot at left is a lock to enable a boat to move between the two branches, at high tide, and the red dot at right is an overflow route, as described above. The next image is of the lock.
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