Features / Bristicles
28 things no one ever tells you about Bristol
From a shell-lined secret grotto to one of the world’s most advanced citywide data networks, we really do have it all.
1. One of the best 360-degree views of Bristol is from the Wills Tower, which even has its own tweeting bell.
is needed now More than ever
Tower tours this Saturday 1st tour 10:30am climb 215ft and see the views of #Bristol book now @BristolUni pic.twitter.com/iwdp1OQ3H8
— Willsmemorial (@wills_memorial) February 2, 2015
There are regular tours to the top of the tower, raising money for Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal.
2. One tower you can’t climb is at the cathedral.
But if you can afford it, you can have dinner in the nave.
3. We have a Pervasive Media Studio.
If you want to find out more what “a creative technologies collaboration” between the Watershed, UWE and University of Bristol looks like, come along to one of their free Friday lunchtime talks.
4. We all know about street art. But how about public art?
Bristol is one of the leading cities in the UK for public art commissioning and for its programme of projects with artists of local, national and international significance. Find out more at Art and the Public Realm Bristol.
5. You can chill out in a botanic garden.
Not just any botanic garden either. The first new university botanic garden to be created in the UK for nearly 40 years.
6. Or at any of our other 400 green spaces.
St Andrew’s Park has it all: a paddling pool, playground, cafe and memorial to a plane that crashed there during World War Two killing three RAF crew on board.
7. You can create your own gin at Weber & Trings.
Choose your botanicals and take home a bottle of your unique creation.
8. Then stick around, because the whole area around the Christmas Steps is amazing.
Like a bow maker who will remind you of Mr Ollivander from Harry Potter, a shop that only sells kimonos, a boardgame cafe, a dreamlike bookshop and Bristol’s smallest cinema within video rental shop 20th Century Flicks.
9. You can play with robots in At-Bristol’s Tinkering Space.
And create giant bubbles, and freeze your shadow, and climb inside a womb, and become a bee, and animate your own film, and and and…
10. The internet of the future is taking shape beneath our feet.
11. You can read a copy of a very old local rag.
William Bonny’s Bristol Post-Boy from August 12, 1704 (issue no. 91) is the earliest surviving copy of a provincial newspaper.
12. Or go stand-up paddle boarding.
See the city from an entirely new vantage point with stand-up paddleboarding tours organised by SUP Bristol.
13. You can explore Redcliffe Caves.
The caves are actually mine workings from the 15th to 18th century where red sandstone rock was excavated and converted into sand for the local glass making trade. Explore them yourself on Bristol’s annual Doors Open Day.
14. Or Goldney Grotto.
The shell-lined grotto created in the 18th century is found within the 10 acre gardens at Goldney Hall in Clifton, University of Bristol student accommodation. The walls and pillars are covered with a variety of rare minerals, shells, corals, rocks and fossils.
15. Or canoe under the streets.
Explorers Connect recently organised a subterranean adventure from one corner of Castle Park to beside the M32.
16. You can walk past this small concrete pyramid without realising the secrets that lurk beneath.
Facing Bristol Bridge near the junction of High Street and Baldwin Street, it marks the entrance to a multitude of tunnels underneath Bristol’s Old City, some dating back to the 12th century when the city was the centre for wine imports. Many of the tunnels were interlinked, making it once possible to walk from Corn Street, under the bustling roads, all the way to Castle Park.
17. We officially have the first canned beer in the UK to be designated as real ale by CAMRA.
Take a bow, the Moor Beer team in St Phillip’s.
18. We have some very intriguing pubs as well.
It is rumoured that underneath the layers of paint, the door of the Hatchet is made from human skin.
19. Pick up this payphone and be let into the secret entrance of one of Bristol’s best bars.
Follow the red light to Red Light.
20. This cafe on the Downs used to be a public toilet.
In the summer months, outside tables are at a premium at Cafe Retreat.
21. On Cheltenham Road, there is a cafe that is also a laundrette.
Excuse the advert. Oh, and Lily Grist from At The Well is also baking every challenge from this year’s Great British Bake Off to then serve to customers.
22. Did we already mention that we have a tiny cinema?
Watch whatever you want with your friends at the 11-seat kino at 20th Century Flicks. Bookings cost from £25 to £75.
23. Nearby, there is a shop that will leave you intrigued.
On a recent visit, Pastimes on Lower Perry Road was selling everything from ceremonial knives to musket shot found around the site of the Battle of Sedgemoor.
24. If you thought that vinyl was dead, think again.
Earlier this year, Tom Friend opened the first vinyl record shop in south Bristol for more than two decades. Find Friendly Records on North Street.
25. You can still hang out with Shauns and Gromits.
This happy chap is outside the Children’s Hospital.
26. Take a ride on a ferry.
Our particular favourites are the Conham Ferry transporting people across the River Avon to Beese’s, and the cross-harbour ferry from the Harbour Inlet to the ss Great Britain. And to return to the previous point, one of the Bristol Ferry fleet has a miniature Gromit as a figurehead.
27. Discover long-lost Banksys.
This example is preserved underneath plexiglass in Kingsdown.
28. Or laugh at a bird that looks like Donald Trump at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
The resemblance is uncanny.
Read more: 22 things you probably didn’t know about Castle Park