Birthday Bristol

This is in keeping with my tradition of getting Pip a holiday for her birthday instead of focusing on presents. I booked us a trip down to Bristol for her 28th. We’d loosely spoken about this before. And even though August is quite a long way away from April, when I told her during a family trip in Italy on Orta San Giulia, it felt nice to sync it up with the Bristol Balloon Fiesta.

I had an inkling at the time but was never fully confident. But it turns out this was our first trip as an engaged couple. Unless you count the trip where I proposed to Chatsworth House.

August soon rolled around and before we knew it, we were taking the four-hour drive down. Faced with gorgeous weather ahead of us. This is quite important for this weekend since a lot of the balloon fiesta activities wouldn’t go ahead. If it was even remotely bad weather. To be honest, in hindsight, sometimes even good weather isn’t enough. And you need perfect conditions whereby the wind, 200 feet up, needs to be blowing in the right direction with the right strength.

August 10th

4hr drive

We got up at a normal time. I decided not to bother doing a run or a ride or a swim or any sort of exercise as we’d be walking around Bristol for most of the day.

That brought back a little bit of time, which we used to get on the road a bit sooner at around 8 o’clock.

Google Maps said it was a three-hour drive, which ended up taking us close to four with stops and traffic, but that meant we got there just after lunchtime. Interestingly enough, Pip’s car passed 22,222 miles on the odometer. We fuelled up halfway through and, interesting only to me, I found out that Pip’s car has cruise control a little just below the steering wheel. Normally, this wouldn’t be all that impressive, but Pip’s car is such a funny shape for anyone over 5ft.

To be close enough to the steering wheel, your legs feel like they’re constantly contorted. But if you’re far enough away so that your legs are comfortable… You end up overreaching for the wheel. Cruise control seems like a perfect solution for this, as you can sit closer to the wheel, set your speed and then relax your legs in a more comfortable position.

Lost at Cabot

We had a bit of trouble finding the hotel. We drove right past it and could see it on the other side of the road. However, given the dual-carriageway style nature of the hotel, we were unable to find it. I couldn’t find anywhere to turn around. We ended up driving two miles through the city, almost reaching Bath.

Even once I had spun it around, we were now on the same side as the hotel, but since it didn’t have parking… We need to get back to the other side to park at Cabot. I managed that easily enough with a little bit of city driving and cheeky manoeuvres.

We dropped all of our stuff in a small room at the hotel since our room wasn’t ready. Then, woefully unprepared for the blazing heat, we walked out up through Queen’s Square. In jeans. (Big mistake)

We meandered through Castle Park, which overlooks the left-handed Giants Brewery Building. And took a few moments to sit and people-watch. All the bikes, students, mums with strollers, and everyone else passing by going about their Saturday. We looped around the dock area to look for somewhere to eat before deciding to head back to where we were just a few hours ago.

Whilst queuing up for some falafel, since the low and slow queue was enormous, Pip spotted a woman eating a naan bread wrap-type thing, which took our fancy. Pip timidly asked her where she got it, and she kindly pointed us right to the end of the market, to Medina. We picked up two lamb wraps with all sorts of multicoloured cabbages, sauerkraut, salads, etc. We headed back to the exact spot we were in, in Castle Park, to continue people-watching, only this time with our lunch in our hands (and all over our lap)

College Green

After lunch and a bit more walking, we found ourselves on College Green, near Brandon Hill. I later found out that this is close to where my friends James and Zoe live. I planned to visit them on this trip, but unfortunately, our schedules didn’t quite align and we didn’t get a chance to see them this weekend. It’s sad, but not the end of the world, as I’m sure we’ll be back down soon. Or even, James and Zoe might be up north.

We stopped off in Society Cafe for a cold brew and a little sweet treat overlooking the harbour. Bristol is full of weird and wonderful people, and we spent a good half an hour here just people-watching and chatting. After that, we aimed to go towards Christmas Steps, which Pip had seen on Instagram somewhere. It wasn’t actually on my radar, but I’m really glad she called it out since it was a super cute little street, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and plenty to look at. There was a chap drawing the steps on a little sketchbook when we were walking down, which I found sweet.

Cabot Tower

We wouldn’t normally head back to the hotel on our little City breaks but the weather took us by surprise. It was 25 degrees plus, creeping towards 30. So, after just a few hours of walking around and a light lunch, we needed to get back, shower and change into something more appropriate. For me, at least, I needed my shorts. After a sit-down, shower, freshen up and recharge, we headed back out towards Brandon Hill. I was trying to take us to Cabot Tower to watch the ascent of the balloons. I had only booked us into the festival tomorrow and not today, so we had to find somewhere else to watch from. It ended up being super romantic, although not very peaceful. It was a great spot to watch all the balloons rise from, amongst hundreds of other people. A little ice cream van sat there, dealing out ice creams, and drinks. Disappear past us into the city.

I’ve seen hot air balloons before, but this was a little different. They looked so majestic in the sky as they floated towards us, all of them in slightly different spots, slightly different heights, and peeking through the trees in different places.

We both loved it and as soon as it was finished, we casually walked back down the hill towards the hotel, loosely searching for food. We seem to have beaten the crowds who all remained on the hill for a little longer than us. This worked out perfectly, since straight away, as soon as we reached the main road, we saw a pizza spot with a few empty tables outside.

Earlier in the day this had been round, so it was quite cool to see it not quite as busy. We took it as a sign and parked ourselves inside next to a huge open window. And ordered two pizzas whilst a few stray balloons carried on floating past. We both went for the same, which is unusual for us. But the chorizo and hot honey were calling us. I have an IPA. Pip had a cider and we sat sipping on our cans and eating our pizza, watching the students. Cyclists and everyone else plodding back down from the hill

Nightcap

We weren’t quite ready to call it a night, and given that the temperature was still really warm for how late it was, we decided to stop off at Number 1 Harbourside on the docks. We walked down to the bottom of the docks, but the further we went, the ropier and ropier the clubs got.

Full of more leary people. We decided to turn back around and the reverse was true. Things got more and more calm the further up we got. To the point where we were sat next to an older couple, chilling out playing chess. Somewhere in the middle was to our taste. I had a rhubarb cider and Pip had a large white wine as we overlooked the harbour. It was a great night, although paying £16 for two drinks was a bit of a shock to the system.

Still adamant to not call it a night, we stopped off at Swoon for an ice cream on the way home. I got myself a salted caramel on the bottom and tiramisu on top. Pip got something similar, although I can’t remember exactly what. It was gorgeous and just what we needed after a hot day of walking around.

We headed back to the hotel, had a quick shower and spent half an hour or so editing our pictures. A couple of YouTube videos and the Olympics on the TV later and we were off to bed at a reasonable time since we had to get up early in the morning for the morning ascent. When I say early, I mean early, early. We set our alarms for five o’clock to leave the hotel room at five thirty. to get there in good time for the 6 am ascent.

August 11th

5 am

Pip and I are used to waking up fairly early on holiday. Or, at least, we’re not used to lying in. And that was certainly not the case this morning. We woke up at 5 am To give us enough time to shower, dress and make our way over to the Balloon Fiesta site for a 6 am ascent. With it being a half-hour drive away and a bit of a walk from the car park, we wanted to make sure we were there well in advance. It seemed completely pointless to get up that early and then not see the balloons take off the ground, so we were a little bit rushed.

We had a bit of a mishap with the sat-nav on the way there. I’m not quite used to Apple Maps. A couple of missed turns later and a few rogue U-turns set us back about 10 minutes. However, all that being said, we struck gold. As we went down, we arrived just in time to see green smoke fluttering in the wind and the announcers say, over the tannoy, that the assent was approved and it will be going ahead. By this point, it was about a quarter past six.

I’m glad we didn’t miss any of the ascent. Although having watched it, I realised that being 10 or 15 minutes late wouldn’t have affected anything at all. Since the balloons slowly inflate and take off the ground one by one over an hour or even two.

They use a little fan to get them started before blowing flames of hot air into their main bulbous canvas. They look so magnificent, especially the huge ones like the Thatcher’s balloon. The green alien looked amazing. The tin of instant coffee. The Wallace and Gromit balloon.

Each balloon has a special identifier or call sign. It’s usually G-something. Some of them get clever with it. The Wallace and Gromit balloon was G-EDAM and the giant purple balloon was G-PURP.

Balloons for breakfast

Over an hour or two, they had all taken off. During this, Pip and I were snapping, snapping, snapping on three different cameras and two different phones. We wondered what people must think of us behind, although to be honest everyone was doing the same thing on multiple devices.

A white cross got rolled out into the middle of the arena after all the balloons had left. This was partially to help random balloons that were flying in from somewhere else to land on the site, like the Big Virgin one but also served as a marker for the competition balloons, which are a bit thinner and taller.

Over the past few days, there was a competition to travel to various points in the country and try to land the sandbag as close as possible to the X. X marks the spot. However, only one balloon even attempted to do this and was a good 50 meters off. In the moment this felt quite disappointing. But on reflection, to get that close to a cross using just a hot air balloon and wind currents is impressive.

We mulled about the Fiesta for a while and visited a few shops, including one where we got a bauble for our Christmas tree. We didn’t necessarily want to shoot off and not make the most of it, but the rest of the festival just seemed like shops and food stalls. In the main arena, there was only one thing that we might like to see, which was historic balloons. However, it didn’t take our fancy enough. to wait around for too long, especially since we didn’t have any chairs. We decided to head back to the hotel. By this point, it was only eight o’clock and breakfast was on till half ten. So we could have gotten up, seen all this, gone back and still got breakfast at the hotel whilst other people were just getting up for the first time. I’m glad we did, as even though we got churros and coffee at the festival, I was glad to have a little bit more to fill me up for the day.

Montpellier

After breakfast, we headed north into Montpellier with colourful houses and artistic graffiti. There was a lot of very obvious poverty lying around in this area which was a shame to see but true of areas in most cities. We went into a bookshop called Here and saw a few cafes in what seemed to be a more student area before looping back to Castle Park where we saw a kid run past with a toy pram and enthusiastically shout ‘SEAGUL’ at the birds. For the second time in two days, we spent 10 or 20 minutes sitting around people watching here – as we looped back around we went past Farro Bakery. Whilst ordering our coffee (Since all the pastries had sold out), two homeless women came up and asked if they had any freebies they could give out, like tea. The staff kindly agreed, but whilst brewing the tea, the two women seemed to run off, to the staff’s surprise.

We did a bit more walking around, although not much of it was new to us as we saw quite a lot yesterday. However, we headed back up Brandon Hill to go to the museum.

The heat got the better of us though, so we decided instead to park ourselves outside a bagel shop. And order two garlic Halloumi and cheese bagels to watch the world go by partially in the shade. People kept walking past as we were eating and commenting on the shop and I was terrified of hearing one of them say that it was a dive or that it was terrible. Thankfully nobody did, as we sat out and acted as advertising for the quiet bagel shop.

We popped into a few thrift shops on the way back down, as well as Tesco to buy some beers for tonight’s ascent. We also stopped off by ‘Pipp’ with two P’s for a hazelnut cruffin and a glazed doughnut.

Clifton Suspension Bridge

We got back to the hotel, Showered (which was necessary), downloaded a few pictures, caught up on our phones, and then set off on the one-hour walk to Clifton Suspension Bridge, which took us a bit of a different way, up via the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Everything seemed to be uphill, and it was close to 30 degrees. I knew we were fighting off the urge to get grumpy sat the hot and sticky walk, both knowing that the view, the balloons and the evening, in general, would be worth it. It was. The observatory park was packed with people all having picnics on chairs. We found a little spot in the shade, parked our bums – Sat on some plastic bags and drank some beers. Pip had a nice rhubarb and ginger beer cocktail, and I had a BrewDog Stout.

Unfortunately, just after 6, we saw on Instagram that there would be no balloons that day. The wind was too strong and blowing in the wrong direction, meaning they would all end up in the channel. I’m not fully sure which channel they meant since I’d imagine there would be somewhere to land between here and the English cChannel but what do I know? We had a walk around Clifton, which turns out to be a nice area, giving rich London vibes. We nipped into the fish and chip shop, where we were somewhere near the front of the queue, since whilst we were waiting for our order, and subsequently eating our fish and chips, the world and his wife decided to do the same thing and the queue tripled in size.

We ambled home in the sun, totalling 11 miles for the day.

August 12th

Despite Bristol being quite a big city, we decided on checkout day that we’d seen enough and would rather spend our time. Looking around somewhere else, even though Bath isn’t on the way home since we have to head south for a few miles. We thought it would be nice to look around there to end our trip. I have a few friends down there, Sofia & Roussetos, who we thought we were trying to sync up with.

We had breakfast, checked out and headed over to the car to get straight on the road for Bath at around 9 o’clock. It didn’t take us too long, and after arriving just before 10, we had a little wanderer I’ve been here quite a few times over the past decade or so, since when Roussetos moved down here, I would visit him every year for a while. I still had to use a map to locate where the main sites were, although, after a few hours, It all came back to me.

We didn’t have a plan or a list of things we wanted to see, but instead just wandered around like typical tourists. Pip fell in love with a little print that was on sale by a cart vendor by the cathedral. It was a painting of the Giant Plane Tree on Abbey Green Courtyard.

A short walk later, we found the courtyard and took a picture of our postcard inside it, with it in the background. Shortly after we looped around to Putney Bridge to see the boats going under before ducking into the market to check out a leather shop, tea and fabric shops. Pip was in her element here, getting little pictures of the artisanal stores. We head back towards the Royal Crescent, which I think I’ve seen before but couldn’t exactly remember when I went.

We spent half an hour or so on the grass, people-watching and sheltering from the sun since even though today was slightly cooler than yesterday, it was more humid. Much more muggy, and not as fun to walk around in. Whilst we were sat down, we spotted a group who kept repeating five-minute-long TikTok dances. Swooping left, right, up and down. All of her friends didn’t seem to take any notice of her. And why not, eh?

We pressed on towards the Botanic Gardens after walking around the circumference of the Royal Crescent. The gardens themselves weren’t that big or particularly impressive, but we do like to spot and walk around botanic gardens when we get the chance. It seems to be our little thing, and Bath didn’t fail us. After this, and in desperate need of a coffee and a sit-down, we headed towards another courtyard and sat underneath a maple tree in King’s Mead Square. We arranged to meet with Roussetos at one o’clock. Unfortunately, Sophia couldn’t see us, so it was just Roo today!

We had exactly an hour to kill, which was a lot of time to chill out, but not much time to walk around. So we decided to have a little potter back towards Putney Bridge and head into TK Max. We bumped into Roo just after purchasing a little wooden mouse in the wooden shop in Abbey Green Courtyard. He was telling us how the courtyard was special to him, as it’s where they found out they’d been accepted for their flat in Bath. We headed towards a different courtyard, similar to where we’d been at Society, and ordered three coffees in the Bath Coffee Company shop.

We had a great catch-up. Roo was telling us about his job, how Sophia is doing well with her psychology degree, all about his recent wedding. And they just bought a house together, which is a bit of a doer-upper, on the outskirts of Bath.

At just three o’clock we decided to make tracks and headed towards the car park to pay up. The sat-nav told us we’d be home at 7 o’clock, which wasn’t the end of the world, but we set off hoping to make up some of that time.