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Bath Food and Drink Fortnight
Bath is widely recognised as being a city with a great hospitality, one reason why the people of Bath are embracing British Food Fortnight. So, from September 23 until October 8 look out for a two-week celebration of food that is produced, sold and served all over Bath. In this period the hotels and restaurants of Bath will come together and display the generosity and hospitality of the city with food demonstrations and tastings. http://visitbath.co.uk

Join the bus club
Try the Big Blue Bus to take the strain out of clubbing. Catch the bus with your friends and you won’t have to worry about being split up, not getting into a club, or finding your way around the city. Special price for the summer £28 – drinks included. Tel. +44 (0) 870 7705310 to book.

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 City Overview

Bristol, the largest city in England’s southwest, weds a deep-rooted maritime heritage with all the modern attributes you’d expect of a booming cosmopolitan city. A strong university presence and a thriving media environment have carved Bristol its reputation for innovation and as a leading centre for the arts. The Arnolfini was one of the first and most successful avant-garde arts centres to be established in Britain, in the 1970s, and in recent years it has been followed in the field of science by Explore At-Bristol, and in history by the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, both using state-of-the-art presentational techniques to put across their ideas.

A huge array of pubs, bars, nightclubs, and restaurants keep the city atmosphere fresh and exciting, while relics of its proud and innovative industrial heritage – such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s ss Great Britain and Clifton Suspension Bridge – help set Bristol’s cultural agenda.

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A Perfect Day

Kick off your day at At-Bristol, a unique experiment in science, nature, and media. Visitors can experience WildWalk, Explore, take in an IMAX show, and visit The Orange Imaginarium, located close together on Harbourside. Alternatively, visit the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, on the other side of the water, near Temple Meads station. From here you can take the ferry to the bottom of Park Street.

Next, make your way across College Green, and climb Park Street until you reach the beautiful building of the City Museum and Art Gallery. Enjoy the collections of Chinese ceramics and paintings by the Bristol school before lunch. You can eat at any one of the many cafés, restaurants, and bars that are scattered around this university area of the city, or you can take a bit of exercise first. The heroes amongst you will cross Queens Road, take a look around Berkeley Square and climb Brandon Hill, crowned by the Cabot Tower. Crossing Jacob’s Wells Road and scaling the aptly named Constitution Hill will bring you into Clifton village, where you can admire the stately curve of Royal York Crescent, the longest of its type anywhere in Europe.

This is a more exclusive spot for lunch, and the Brunel Wine Bar on the Mall is recommended, especially for its Sunday roasts. Spend the afternoon browsing around some of Bristol’s boutique establishments. Chocoholics should pop in to Bar Chocolat on the Mall mid-afternoon to indulge themselves. Alternatively, visit the Bristol Zoo Gardens, and possibly the Observatory and Camera Obscura. Sunset should see you sipping something bubbly on the terrace of the Avon Gorge Hotel, enjoying the breathtaking view.

Return to the centre for your evening’s entertainment, perhaps via the excellent Fishworks restaurant on Whiteladies Road. Park Street offers a choice of clubs: Bar III is a smart bar with a nightclub behind; the Blue Monkey at the bottom of Park Street is a bar and restaurant, quite trendy and sophisticated, with a great choice of cocktails. If you stay out all night, take a cab back up to Clifton to experience the mother of all fry-ups at the York Café in York Place.

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Accommodation

Bristol and the surrounding area offers visitors a large range of quality accommodation ranging from stylish ‘designer’ hotels to comfortable family-run guesthouse accommodation. You can choose from waterfront accommodation in the centre of the city, country house hotels, or farmhouse B&Bs.

The four-star Jarvis Ramada Plaza offers elegantly furnished rooms and good facilities. The hotel is within easy reach of local attractions like Bristol Zoo and the Clifton Galleries. Alternatively, the four-star City Inn Bristol is more modern in design with a stylish contemporary interior and overlooks Temple Gardens. Book through www.flybehotels.com or +44 (0) 0871 900 8297.

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Getting to Bristol

By road: The city centre is located 13km north of the airport, on the A38.

By bus or coach: An express coach link, which takes about half an hour, connects the airport to Bristol Temple Meads railway station and the city’s bus station.

By taxi: Taxis in the city that display the Welcome Host sign employ drivers who have completed a special course covering the attractions and places of interest in Bristol.

Contact Flybe’s partner Avis for the best available car hire rates. www.flybe.com.

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Getting Around

Bristol has a network of local bus services, making this a great way of getting around the city. Marlborough Street Bus Station is the hub for regional and local bus services supplied by First National Express and Bakers Dolphin coaches will take you further afield. Open-top buses provide guided commentary and a hop-on, hop-off service, starting and finishing on the waterfront – a great idea for your first day in the city.

There are two mainline railway stations: Temple Meads serves the city centre and Parkway serves the northern suburbs. For all your timetables and fares UK wide: National Rail Enquiries +44 (0) 8457 48 49 50

For all your rail travel requirements: Traveline +44 (0) 870 608 2 608

The Bristol Ferry Boat Co., among others, operates ferries to and from all the waterfront attractions. (You can actually take the ferry from Temple Meads to the bottom of Park Street, which is cheaper and a lot more fun than the bus.) Upstream the harbour connects with the River Avon, and then with the Kennet & Avon Canal and the city of Bath. You can hire a narrowboat and explore this canal system yourself, or, alternatively, the Bristol Packet company runs guided trips to Bath from spring to autumn. The historic steamer Balmoral and the paddlesteamer Waverley run occasional day excursions into the Bristol Channel.

Bristol is quite a compact city, so it’s easy to get around the central area on foot. It’s also fun to explore by bike – but the hills are pretty steep. Some streets also have cobbles, which may take some getting used to. There’s also an extensive network of traffic-free cycle routes, often running along old railway lines. www.sustrans.org.uk

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Activities

Bristol Rugby: If you are on holiday in Bristol why not watch their highly entertaining rugby team in the Guinness premiership at weekends throughout September until next June. www.bristolrugby.co.uk

Museums: Bath has an extensive number of museums, galleries and exhibitions, which display the city’s rich tradition and heritage. The museums are attractive for all ages, with lovely displays from events in years gone by. The American Museum in Bath, the fashion museum and the Holburne museum of art are three examples of museums in this area. http://visitbath.co.uk

Thermae Bath Spa: Britain’s premier spa is a fantastic location for any woman who feels that she needs to be pampered, or for any man who thinks he ‘needs a break from it all’. Located in Bath the spa offers the only place in the UK where you can relax in natural hot waters.  It includes four thermal baths and a full range of spa treatments and therapies. Tel: +44 (0) 1225 331234. www.thermaebathspa.com

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Nightlife

One of the most popular clubs is the new Brownstones at 13-15 King Street. For their calendar of events www.dontstayin.com/uk/bristol/brownstone

Bar III on Park Street is a nice bar with a nightclub at the back. There is another trendy bar and restaurant at the bottom of Park Street called the Blue Monkey, which serves great cocktails.

The students’ nightclub is the Lizard Lounge - definitely the only place to be seen on a Monday or Wednesday night.

For a more cultural experience try the Watershed - a cinema on the waterfront that shows alternative films. There is also a really great café here with a large menu and good food.

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Property

The average price of all properties in Bristol last year was £207,482 based on 2113 properties being sold, and only 236 of them worth £500,000 or more. The most expensive region in the Bristol area is College Road, where only two houses were sold last year. In and around Bristol a detached house costs around £378,746 on average, and an apartment usually costs around £175,660. Property prices in Bristol have stayed fairly stationary over the last few years and are some of the cheapest in the West of England.

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Bristol Business

Once one of the major English ports, Bristol has been left high and dry by the silting of the River Avon, and now looks to the road and rail network for its communication links. Situated at the crossroads of the M4 and M5 motorways, with easy access to the west and centre of England and all of Wales, Bristol is still at the heart of things. The express rail link to London takes two hours, and Cardiff, Birmingham, and Exeter are all within easy reach.

Property prices have risen sharply in recent years as people have realised the benefits of living in a city that has everything, without the overcrowding problems of London or Manchester. Clifton, in particular, has boomed because of its elegant housing stock and charming location.

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You’ll search far and wide to find anywhere prettier than Clifton. This tiny village suburb of Bristol, perched on Clifton Down, with views of the famous Suspension Bridge across the Avon Gorge, has it all. It has parks and gardens, pubs and cafés, shops for browsing and shops for buying. It has a wonderful feeling of faded grandeur about it, and although the wealthy 18th-century merchants’ houses are now better maintained than a few years ago, there’s still a bit of peeling paintwork and stucco to remind you that this city has seen better, and worse days.

Walk the cobbled streets, admire the ironwork and railings, puff your way up a few hills. You can’t fail to be captivated by the crescents curving their way around the side of the hill, that lead you ever onwards, tempting you to take a few more steps to see if they will ever end. Cornwallis Crescent is a fine example, but definitely overshadowed by its grander sister, Royal York Crescent above. The Crescent retains a slightly bohemian charm, with its broad promenade, views of the Gorge, and handful of convenient pubs and shops tucked away just around the corner.

Talking of pubs, no visit to Clifton is complete without a visit to the Coronation Tap. This has a long history as a cider pub, serving the best of Somerset’s apple scrumpy to generations of old boys who should have known better and groups of students who were slow to learn. ‘One pint drunk, two pints hysterical, three pints homicidal’ goes the old adage, and caution is required with this innocuous-tasting but thirst-quenching beverage. Generations of cider-drinkers have been confused by the double entrance and exit of this pub, emerging blinking into the afternoon sunshine and being puzzled to find themselves on a different street from the one they had entered by.

But you can’t leave Clifton without visiting the bridge. Impressive and elegant from a distance, it is awesome to walk over, with the true magnitude of Brunel’s task apparent from the enormous drop to the mud-flats below. Apparently, one lovelorn Victorian maiden attempted suicide by jumping from the bridge, but was saved by her billowing petticoats, which acted as a parachute to land her safely, but somewhat humiliatingly, in the mudflats below. So don’t even think about it.

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