Bristol: a good choice

So here you are in the big old city. The UK’s ninth largest according to the latest figures (but because of the slightly weird local authority boundaries round these parts – which mean that a large chunk of Bristol is technically in South Gloucestershire – the total population may well be somewhat higher than the officially registered 430,000-odd). Rest assured, however. This is also an entirely ‘doable’ city and what looks like one big urban sprawl is, in fact, a collection of individual neighbourhoods – a set of joined-up villages, if you will. Each of these will give you a different perspective on what it means to live in Bristol, so if you live on campus in Frenchay or in halls in Stoke Bishop, you’ll see the place quite differently. That, though, is one of the reasons it is such a fine place to live: you can be here for years, decades even, and still come across hidden treasures and things you didn’t know existed.

A good plan, then, is to set aside some time for a bit of exploration. The centre’s the obvious place to start – especially as pretty much all roads and all bus routes lead here. Unless you’re going to Bristol Hippodrome to catch a show or you’re particularly fond of lacklustre fountains, the immediate centre is probably just somewhere you’ll pass through (or throw up in after a particularly heavy night). A walk from here in any direction, though, will introduce you to some of the city’s key landmarks and main thoroughfares. Corn Street, for example, will take you past St Nick’s Market and the Corn Exchange with its Nails (where merchants used to haggle over their deals) and on towards retail central, aka Broadmead and Cabot Circus shopping centres. Go in almost exactly the opposite direction from the centre, on the other hand, and you’ll be at the foot of Park Street where, around College Green, you’ll find Bristol Cathedral (originally St Augustine’s Abbey), the Central Library and the Council House or as we’re supposed to call it nowadays City Hall (complete with golden unicorns). If you’re a Bristol Uni student, you’ll have no doubt already tramped up and down Park Street a fair few times, but if you’re not, it’s that steep hill topped with the mighty stump of the Wills Building: Clifton Triangle, Clifton Village and the vast open spaces of the Downs lie in this direction.

Perhaps the most interesting route to take from the centre if you’re trying to get your head round the city is to head out around the docks. Back in the 1980s, the area around the Floating Harbour (to give it its proper name) was pretty bleak and desolate. You wouldn’t know it now. The urban wasteland left behind by the post-war decline and eventual fall of the once-thriving port has been thoroughly transformed with upmarket dockside living solutions (aka flats) and other developments. You can, though, still get a feel for the city’s long maritime history here: not least from the presence of the Brunel’s SS Great Britain and the replica of John Cabot’s ship The Mathew, the warehouse buildings and the cranes on the wharf outside M Shed. A visit to M Shed itself – now a museum of Bristol – will show you more about this maritime heritage as well as introduce you to the darkest period of the port’s history when it played a central role in the barbaric transatlantic slave trade. 

At the M Shed, too, you’re on what’s known as Spike Island, a long slither of land between the Floating Harbour on one side and The Cut on the other (beyond which lies Bedminster and south Bristol). The island’s home to, amongst other things, legendary music venue The Louisiana, the last remains of the New Gaol (partially destroyed during the great Bristol riot of 1831) and, towards the western end, the whopping girt Spike Island arts centre and Create (home to much eco-friendly activity). Beyond that, on the far side of the river Avon as it loops away into its spectacular gorge and under the equally spectacular Suspension Bridge, lies Ashton Court Estate and Leigh Woods – effectively the city’s western green belt and the start of the countryside proper.

A tramp around the docks will also introduce you to two key cultural hotspots: Arnolfini and Watershed. Both have an international reputation for what they do – art at the former, film and media at the latter – and both pioneered the regeneration, not only of the docks, but of the city itself as it struggled to find an identity after the decline of its traditional industries. Culture and media, after all, are at the heart of what Bristol now does and have helped it become a magnet for creative types of all kinds and, indeed, a tourist destination. 

That said, Bristol’s economy isn’t simply about innovative digital start-ups and cross-platform collaborations. Finance remains a big employer, while there’s more heavy-duty industry out at Avonmouth, as well as engineering and aerospace in Filton. And if you’ve ever wondered who’s responsible for buying all the toilet roll for the armed forces, the MOD has a huge procurement centre out at Abbey Wood.

In short, this isn’t a city which it’s easy to sum up. One minute you can be sitting amidst the industrial chic of a hipster café-bar, the next you might be ordering a pint of cloudy cider from a former aerospace worker in a pub apparently made out of lino or tucking into authentic Indian street food at a top-end restaurant. The city’s population too is hugely and healthily diverse, with longstanding African-Caribbean and Asian communities now joined by Somalians, east Europeans and a plethora of others. Walk these streets and you’ll hear a cosmopolitan mix of languages, and while this multiculturalism has certainly given us plenty of international food stores, it’s also given us a lot more and fed into the very character and culture of the place.

Bristol, too, is continually reinventing itself. This year we’re European Green Capital, recognised as being at the forefront of eco-progress, while we’re also the UK’s first Cycling City and are often cited as one of the best cities to live in the UK. You made a good choice, see? Welcome.