Bristol & Bath - After a long drive on the M11 and M4, we camped at Knight's Folly in Bitton, a small campsite located nicely between the two cities of Bristol and bath acting as a perfect little spot to stay and drive between. Campsite was clean, well looked after and relatively quiet (when the road noise had died down later on). Campsite was on a slope, £25 a night. The Berghaus Cairngorn's maiden pitching!
Our hosts were kind enough to let us charge our devices inside one of their buildings -which is a godsend when phones are old and maps are burning their way through phone's battery life!
Our first exposure to using a mounted gas-burner, too. We successfully made some saucepan coffee on the first morning and Lee managed to (accidently) turn it into a flamethrower on the second morning. Fortunately, Lee's folly was brought back under control after some toasting some of his digits.
Bristol is a young vibrant city vividly contrasting against Bath.
Bristol is well known for its vibrant graffiti, its UNESCO status for film and it has some super bougie shops too. Due to illness we got here on a Monday so missed a lot of potential evening entertainment, due to tent set up, an extraordinary amount of traffic and just poor timing on our part. Oh well, always next time! This is absolutely a city we would like to come back to, expecially for the Alcatraz bar!
We spent the evening in the YHA Bristol, booking trips and campsites while eating their pizza. Great little venue, seemingly for travellers through the city (doesn't do stag dos but would make a killing if they did!). Lee won at bowling by a large margin and tried (and failed) to teach Charlotte how to properly bowl, which caused her to lose miserably!
Lee burned the remaining pizza in the saucepan the next morning. Still good!
We went to Bath, on a mildly drizzly day, this was the first time Charlotte had visited Bath, so it was a new experience for her, we spent some time wandering around the city, unbeknownst to Lee, Charlotte went on a mini 'Bridgerton' tour and we wandered around finding Lady Danbury's house (Holbourne Museum), the Assembly Rooms (used in a scene) and the Modiste (which turned out to be a lovely Deli named The Abbey Deli!)
Bath has some lovely 18th century architecture, which somewhat resembles a little bit of Buxton in Derbyshire! We spent a lot of time walking through a little slice of history finding our way to another body of water in the form of the river Avon (you will come to find in our travels that we both like being near water)
Did you know that Jane Austen lived in Bath, in Royal Crescent in the early 19th century, and that there's an annual Jane Austen festival?
On our way back to the car, the skies decided that that was the perfect time to open, we ended up in Beckford Bottle Shop as we dripped into their shop, we had a lovely glass of wine before chancing the walk back to the car.
Parking was bloody expensive! We parked near Royal Crescent, but we are sure there was cheaper alternatives!
The evening was not the most interesting of nights in a Wetherspoons, but we did get to learn of tocal legend 'Dick Boy' - so at least we soaked up the local culture in that regard.
"Richard Haynes, alias Dick Boy, born of poor parents in 1766 at Oldland Green, in the parish of Bitton, Gloucestershire. His father was a collier, with whom he worked til he was about 13 when he was put apprentice to a hatter. After some time, a disagreement happened, he beat his master and set off.
From the age of 7 or 8 years he was addicted to pilfering from the neighbours where he lived. He was connected with a gang of wicked boys about 9 or 10 in number (possibly from the Cock Road Gang), of which himself and one Carey were the principle heroes; Haynes would frequently steal great quantities of provisions from his parents and the neighbours to carry to his companions.
One curious theft in particular, he commited, when about ten years old: he watched a nieghbour putting some white pot and pudding into an oven; about half an hour previous to the time of drawing, he forced a way through the back part of the oven, plundered it, and after stopping the breach, carried its contents to his companions, who highly applauded his genius. When the woman returned she exclaimed, "I am sure this is done by a witch!" "
And now, onto Cornwall!
