Bristol UK - First Days

We'd been discussing returning to the UK for a while and had already decided on Bristol as probably the best place for us. So, when we left Australia sooner than we had anticipated, the decision on where to go was easy.

Why Bristol? It's an old place, having received a royal charter in 1155. It's on the west coast. In the past, we have already lived in London and the South/South East, so, wanted to be in another part of the country. Bristol is ideally located to explore the West country and more of the North. A rich maritime heritage and a location on the mighty Bristol Channel appealed (second highest tides in the world, after the Bay of Fundy), as did its long history with architecture to match. It's a university town, small (only about 465,000), has an international airport and a rail station from which you can get to anywhere in the country. When we later learned that the Sunday Times had rated it the 'best place to live in Britain' for 2014 and 2017, we felt we'd made the right decision. Bristol also won the EU's European Green Capital Award in 2015, the first UK city to do so.

On the downside, with a population growth of over 10% in the last three years and a large student population, it has a very tight rental market and prices are only next to London in their heights. As usual, we applied logic to the process and quickly found a suitable rental, we move in next week. We would have liked a period property, but, most were unfurnished and/or needed work. We needed furnished and fast so took a new build. No one has lived in it, so, it will be all new and we can just move right in. We can walk everywhere from there, including to Bristol Temple Mead railway station, no car required, hooray!

Walking around The Floating Harbour (located on a stretch of the tidal River Avon its depth is lock-protected) is a delight. Its banks are lined with historic ships.

One of the boats with a Canadian connection is a replica of 'The Matthew', the boat John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland in 1497.

Other interesting sights are a steam crane and a row of historic, moving gantries, used to load/unload ships.

There'll be a lot more posts on Bristol in the months to come. There's a wealth of things to see and do here and in the surrounding area. Bristol is just 106 miles west of London, 77 miles south-southwest of Birmingham, 26 miles east of the Welsh Capital Cardiff and 60 miles east-southeast of Swansea. Interestingly, it's a city and also a county, positioned between North Somerset and Gloucestershire.