Ship shape and Bristol Fashion

Last weekend we (me, Liz and Bex) went on a mini road trip to visit Hazel and Jen in Bristol.  (I did see if my brother wanted to meet up too but he didn't. Sigh.)

As much as I love London, I also LOVE getting out of it, and a weekend away is bliss. 

I managed to coerce everyone to meet at Cheddar Gorge as I've never been and have always wanted to go.  I would have loved to go in the caves but a Duke of Knobland owns half of the Gorge and has turned it into a tourist attraction where you have to pay £18.95 if you want to look in caves, do a walk round it and get a bus tour of the Gorge.  APparently visitor numbers have dropped (probably because the tickets are so expensive) and to get visitor numbers back up they want to build a cable car to the top of the Gorge.  Fingers crossed planning permission won't be approved.

 The National Trust on the other hand (I bloody love the National Trust) have a small information centre and gift shop (which is filled with some quite cool stuff) and own the other half of the land that the Duke doesn't. You pay a fiver to park all day (quite steep but cheaper than London!) and they've published a nice 4 mile walk that goes up, round and down the Gorge so you can see it in its full glory, without spending a penny.

We did exactly that (and lost two people in the process -  the beginning is VERY steep! Edited to add that they didn't die/fall down, they just gave up) but it's a beautiful and rewarding walk nonetheless.

We also found a really cool cache on the way, look at this fella!!

After the walk we wandered round the town of Cheddar for a bit.  There's not too much to do and it's quite touristy but there's a plethora of cider and cheddar and ice cream shops, all of which give free samples, so we ate many mini cubes of different flavoured cheese as a post walk snack. 

We drove back to Bristol in high spirits and I got a little lost, we were in the back end of nowhere and the sat nav signal cut out so what was a 30 min journey turned into an hour, but it was very pretty and lush and green so we didn't mind.  

We went for dinner in a pub in Kings Street where we had pulled pork burgers and chips, then for a drink in The Apple which is a cider boat on the river and confusingly smells overwhelmingly of horses.  A sip of the Ol' Bristolian cider they have on tap confirmed that the smell came from this as it tasted of the horse smell too, weird. 

We had envisaged a big night out but we were all tired from the walk and drive, so a bit embarrassingly we were home by midnight after hailing a cab. Something I'd eaten that day hadn't agreed with me and I spent half an hour moaning about feeling sick before vomming into my hand in a mad dash up the stairs to the toilet.  Nice.  Felt much better for it though afterwards!

The next day we had brunch in North Street Standard which has a bit of an industrial vibe but the food was very good.  I had the best breakfast of my life, a veg fry up of halloumi, spinach, bubble and squeak, mushroom, tomatoes, toast and an egg.  Unfortunately Hazel's breakfast took forever to arrive and we'd all finished by the time it came out, and they'd got her order wrong.  They were a bit blase about the whole thing which was a shame. 

After that we strolled down the road looking at antique shops and a small market in the Tobacco Factory where I bought some cake for tea, then back to Hazel's house where we met Jen and Samer for cake and a catch up. 

I love Bristol and could happily live there.  I wish I'd gone to university there but hindsight and all that.   Thank you for hosting us Hazel, it was lovely to see you!!