My Bristol Favourites: Luke Daniels

Luke Daniels is the landlord of the Bag of Nails in Hotwells, which has recently restarted live music in their upstairs room.

Luke, who grew up in Winterbourne, has previously worked at the Cornubia and for Bath Ales, as well as managing the former Smiles brewery tap on Colston Street.

The Bag of Nails – known as much for its coterie of cats as for its splendid beer selection – has twice been named Bristol24/7’s pub of the year, while in 2015 the pub was also named the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year by the Beard Liberation Front.

These are Luke’s top-five Bristol favourites:

The view from outside the Hillgrove

The view across Bristol from the Hillgrove is the one Luke has looked at and loves the most – photo: Martin Booth

“Especially when you’re younger and haven’t got much money, you can’t do a lot of things. My favourite view, the one I’ve looked at the most, is the view from outside the Hillgrove. When you leave the Hillgrove and look across the city, I just love that big wide expanse. It might be something to do with being outside the Hillgrove, but you can see half the city from that spot halfway up Kingsdown which is really nice.”

Trees

Luke has fond memories of climbing a Lebanese cedar tree in St Andrew’s Park – photo: Martin Booth

“Bristol has got a lot of trees and I think they’re an integral part of the city. My favourite tree in the city is one that I climbed a lot when I was younger, a Lebanese cedar in St Andrew’s Park. If you climb it right to the top today you might find my initials. I spent a lot of time climbing that tree and I think it’s the perfect place to monkey around as we like to do.”

Temple Church

The leaning tower and walls of this large late medieval church in Bristol survived bombing during the Second World War – photo: Martin Booth

“My favourite building comes from my days at the Cornubia. It’s the leany church just off Victoria Street, Temple Church. I like it for many reasons. I like that it’s on the site of the original Temple Church, Knights Templar blah blah. A round church. We got rid of them because they were too powerful. I also like it because it’s such an odd, understated Bristol icon. I have read that it leans more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I don’t know if that’s true but I’ve read that… There was a team of people going around pulling down buildings after they had been bombed in the war. And they wanted to pull down the church because it was leaning. They were about to pull it down when people said, no, it’s been like that for 400 years, it’s not got any worse.”

Stokes Croft Riot

“I’m not celebrating it but my favourite event has been the Tesco riot on Stokes Croft because it was such a Bristol thing. To have a riot about a supermarket opening… and for the police to balls it up so badly and they really did. It was so funny how much they messed it up.”

Phantom Limb

“I’m thinking of the favourite band I have seen in Bristol over the last 25 years. There’s a lot of options but I think it’s probably Phantom Limb. The band were very good to give me a preview CD of their debut album and it was beautiful. They ended up filming a video behind my bar. They came in one day and asked if they could film a video just on an iPhone I think, ‘Can we just film a video in your pub because we love your pub?’… I just said to everyone, the band are going to film a video, order now, you can’t order for ten minutes and they performed the song behind the bar which was really great.”

Main photo: Martin Booth

Read more: Pub landlord pens signs to persuade punters to purchase pints

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