Bristol advice

[DCI Harry Batt]

Wild Place Project isn't free, not is it indoors, but it is excellent.

[DCI Harry Batt]

THEY HAVE BEARS AND WOLVES

[DCI Harry Batt]

Also go up Cabot tower. That is indoors.

(And has been mentioned already I see)

[treibeis]

If you're up for an off-the-beaten-track adventure, there's a garden & aquatics centre just a few miles south of the city. There, children can run around to their heart's content, rearranging the garden gnomes and trying to catch the fish with their bare hands, while their parents have a cup of tea and a slice of cake in the cafeteria.

If they manage to complete this task for about 30 seconds, an angry ogre, in the form of a tall, blonde woman in her mid-50s, appears out of nowhere and shouts, "Whose fucking kids are these? Right, hands out the water, gnomes back where they belong and get the fuck out of here NOW!"

The ogre will be my sister. She runs the place.

[Nefertiti2]

If you're up for an off-the-beaten-track adventure, there's a garden & aquatics centre just a few miles south of the city. There, children can run around to their heart's content, rearranging the garden gnomes and trying to catch the fish with their bare hands, while their parents have a cup of tea and a slice of cake in the cafeteria.

If they manage to complete this task for about 30 seconds, an angry ogre, in the form of a tall, blonde woman in her mid-50s, appears out of nowhere and shouts, "Whose fucking kids are these? Right, hands out the water, gnomes back where they belong and get the fuck out of here NOW!"

The ogre will be my sister. She runs the place.

Is it twinned with Hamburg Crazy Golf? is it possible to get a BOGOF?

[treibeis]

Is it twinned with Hamburg Crazy Golf? is it possible to get a BOGOF?

My sister's been dealing with the general public every day of her working life for the last 40-odd years. Everything I know about customer-orientation and service-friendliness, I've learned from her.

[Balderdasha]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone! I'm very tempted to go and visit treibeis' sister but we might not squeeze it in.

[Balderdasha]

Day 1 in Bristol has had the usual ups and downs of a Balderdasha family holiday. Yesterday evening we went out for dinner and discovered that super furry dice is quite correct that the eateries get pretty busy. It being a Friday night probably didn't help but we ended up getting a table at Franco Manca with a very friendly waiter so the kids were happy with pizza and colouring. The area had a nice vibe but we couldn't see that much in the dark.

Unfortunately, at 5:30am we were woken up by our daughter vomiting everywhere. It won't be the food, it's just whatever bug we've had making its way through the family. I've had it as a monstrous cold, son shat himself, husband has had piercing earache. Whatever virus we get, daughter is usually fine for ages and then abruptly vomits at some point. Me and husband went into instant emergency drill mode, stripping the beds, washing down daughter, dumping all the vomit covered sheets in the bath, cleaning up the carpet, recovering the bed with absorbent pads and towels and tucking daughter back in again. We were all asleep again within about 45 minutes. Then we ended up missing the hotel breakfast because everyone needed a lie in, so I just bought some oat bars and strawberries from Tesco.

After explaining the situation to reception and apologising profusely for the scene that was going to greet the cleaners (we'd washed out the sheets as best we could but it's still an unpleasant job for anyone) we headed out.

We went for a nice walk along the river and saw a boat with my daughter's name. Took some photos with statues and street art. We were heading for the M-shed. Found a boat just outside that was letting visitors in for the day so we went in and got to look inside the engine room and try on the captain's hat / spin the steering wheel. It was an old ferry from the 1940s but has been out of commission since 2017.

Before M-shed we had a look around the trendy cargo box pop-up restaurants behind, which had the bonus that the kids could eat hot dogs and I could have a more healthful teriyaki mushroom poké bowl. Then we spent a while exploring the M-shed. The kids enjoyed dressing up as fire fighters, playing hopscotch, playing a board game where you're trying to get an animated film made, spying Shaun the Sheep in a hot air balloon, etc. Went for tea and hot chocolate in the YHA cafe because the fancier cafe next door had a massive queue. The guy who served me kept apologising for the fact that he was hungover and usually worked the night shift so wasn't used to actual live customers. He kept forgetting things like the fact that we might need mugs for the tea, and milk, but we got there in the end.

Then we went and had a go on the ferris wheel. Not the best day for it weatherwise but son had decided to "face his fears" after spending the day complaining about his fear of heights so we decided to strike while the iron was hot. Personally, I absolutely hate ferris wheels due to my fear of heights, but I have reached a point where I can sit on one relatively calmly and smile for photos even if I'm wincing internally and my white knuckles holding onto the seat give me away. Kids liked the stag beetle and Cary Grant statues.

Daughter is completely fine again, though hasn't had a huge appetite. Hopefully she won't vomit again. She broke me in fairly early on as she got gastroenteritis when she was only a few months old and I was looking after her on my own. She wanted a cuddle every time she felt sick so projectile vomited literally onto me 13 times in about six hours. Everything since then has been comparatively less horrific.

We're back at the hotel now. The heroic cleaners have put fresh sheets on all the beds. We might just eat in the hotel tonight rather than brave Saturday night restaurant queues.

[Logan Mountstuart]

All that, and still getting 3s in Wordle. Feel like I'm playing Superwoman. Hope today is more tranquil.

[Guy Profumo]

Definitely the area around the Camera Obscura and a walk across the bridge. Although don't get your kids' heads stuck in the railings and have to call the Fire Brigade as they did for my 7 year old sister.

I also remember many times sliding down the rocks on our bums back then. Different times, the 70s.

And as Nef said, a trip to Bath is only 15 mins on the train.

The air museum at Filton with Concorde as the star attraction is great too.

Don't walk over the bridge if you're uncomfortable with heights

[Nurse Duckett]

Don't walk over the bridge if you're uncomfortable with heights

That's me. I walked over with my eyes shut (with some assistance from Mrs D) and very nearly cracked my head on one of the support stanchions. It was worth it to get to the other side and a lovely walk through Ashton Court, but as I might have said earlier, we returned to the city centre via another route, and I'd think twice about doing it again.

[Balderdasha]

Day 2 in Bristol was a decidedly non-touristy day but still enjoyable. Husband needed to chill out a bit as he's been working full time during the week while we're here so after the hotel breakfast we just watched a couple of episodes of Columbo together. We then realised that we were completely out of clean clothes again. So I took a suitcase of clothes to a launderette / cafe and husband took the kids shoe shopping to very kindly give me a couple of hours without having to discuss my favourite Pokémon. The cafe served very nice carrot cake with purple flowers on top of the cream cheese and I read a "Bristol Life" magazine. Husband rang me to say that son had discovered his very first wobbly tooth. He has been waiting for this for years and years because daughter had her first wobbly tooth at age five so this is the most exciting news of the holiday as far as he's concerned.

Husband and kids came to meet me once the clothes were dry, helped me pair up socks and then we took it in turns to drag the suitcase back past lots and lots of rather cool graffiti. There are definitely more painted buildings / fences / walls in Bristol than in most other cities I've been to. We spent the journey back singing an invented version of "there was an old lady who swallowed a fly" except our version was "there was a young girl who swallowed a tooth" in commemoration of the fact that daughter did indeed swallow her first wobbly tooth in her sleep.

In the evening, we went to a buffet called Za Za Bazaar. Not exactly classy or very high quality, but a relaxing option if you have a family like ours where I'd ideally like to eat vegetarian food with lots of vegetables, husband wants to eat lots of meat, daughter wants to eat sushi and burritos and son wants to eat five varieties of carbohydrates plus cheese. A buffet caters for all our wishes and nobody complains.

Today, we've had a busier day. Husband is working again. Me and the kids met up with a friend of mine who I haven't seen for 12 years and her 2 year old son. We went to a soft play place which meant that we could actually catch up and chat a bit while my kids took her toddler round the climbing frame (though we did still have to go in and out of the climbing frame ourselves quite a lot, fortunately we're both small enough to fit in anywhere that an average 11 year old can). My son made friends with a little boy in the ball pit and made me go and ask his dad for his address so they can be pen pals (if it actually makes my son do some writing, I am very keen on this). Afterwards we ate snacks from Greggs in a park while my son chased pigeons and my friend's son became very fixated with poking small stones into a drain. There's a road crossing painted with the LGBT rainbow flag (the one that includes the black/brown lines too) which my kids are keen on. Then my friend had to go home to try and get her toddler to nap.

I decided there was just about enough time to go and see the SS Great Britain in the afternoon so took the kids on a route march across town fuelled by Greggs doughnuts, despite their whines about their painful feet (they're not usually that bad but they've got new shoes that aren't fully broken in yet). At one point I thought I had completely mucked up and ended up on the wrong side of the river with no bridge to the SS Great Britain, but then we found the little ferry that takes you across the river and hopped on.

The SS Great Britain is fab. Son really enjoyed scrubbing the deck. They loved the contrast between first class and steerage class, which they dubbed "fancy class" and "creepy class" because the steerage class area was so much darker, and had mannequins sneezing and grumbling. One of the favourite bits was an occupied toilet where a voice cries out "gadzooks, there's already someone in here!" when you push on the door. Daughter was disappointed that she was neither old enough or tall enough to climb the rigging. Outside the boat we went through the Isombard Kingdom Brunel museum. The kids keep calling him Isombard Kingkong Brunel because of the character in Dangermouse but they may possibly have learnt a few facts about the real engineer. We wore top hats round the museum, tried drawing perfect circles on a rocking train carriage, voted for propellors over paddles, learnt about Brunel going across the Avon Gorge in a basket precariously hanging from an iron rope, and had smoke blown at us in a mini circular cinema.

We're back at the hotel again now trying to decide about dinner. I have vague plans to take the kids to see the suspension bridge tomorrow now we've learnt about its designer. I think I need to find a bus across to there though because today has taught me that the kids will not walk that far at the moment without me wanting to murder them.

[Balderdasha]

Don't walk over the bridge if you're uncomfortable with heights

I'm not very keen on walking across it but it will depend on whether the kids want to. If they're happy just looking at it and maybe walking to the camera obscura that's what we'll do, but if they want to walk across it, I will suck it up and do it.

[Gas In Name Only]

The SS Great Britain is fab. Son really enjoyed scrubbing the deck.

I did my work experience on the SS GB and it pretty much consisted of a week of scrubbing the decks and tarring the ropes. Glad they're still finding willing children to do it

[Sam]

My former proofreading tutor (and now colleague/boss, since I've become a tutor on the same course) volunteers once a week on the SS GB, which in combination with my girlfriend being a tourist (when in the UK) and her family having gone over with us last time we went means I've visited it at least once on each of my last four visits home. The revelation in Balderdasha's latest update that they now let people climb the rigging has just ensured I'll be back again later in the year.

Is the Matthew not in the harbour anywhere at the moment, Balders? It was outside M Shed last time I was there (which was four and a half years ago, so no particular reason to think it would still be!).

[Balderdasha]

Yes, the Matthew is there, between the M shed and the SS Great Britain, and we've been admiring it from the outside but it's not letting visitors on board until March.

[Balderdasha]

Day 4. We got the bus across to Clifton today. Walked up the hill for great views of the suspension bridge and Avon Gorge. Found a nice playground with big wooden climbing frames. Walked up to the camera obscura. Found a statue of Wallace dressed as Isombard Kingdom Brunel. The weather wasn't great for the camera obscura so the lady in charge of the tickets wouldn't let us pay, but there was still just about enough light to faintly see cars and vans going across the bridge. Then we climbed the 130 steep, uneven and slippery steps down into the Giant's Cave where the children stood on a see-through platform jutting out into the gorge, with the river flowing underneath them while I stood a little way away on the solid stone trying not to show them how terrified I was. As it was pancake day I managed to find a very fancy French restaurant which agreed to serve us just dessert of crepes with caramelised banana, hazelnut chocolate sauce and Chantilly cream. The children greatly enjoyed them but insisted that pancake day at home is still better because there are then unlimited pancakes. Went shopping for baby clothes for a friend of mine, and played with a toy till in the shop, then caught the bus back into town. Chased some pigeons and seagulls round castle park. Bought another round of nit shampoo and face masks for spa day mark 2 this evening.

This holiday has been making me think about the concept of home schooling. The kids have been naturally learning some stuff. A bit of history, geography, science, RE, etc, and we do lots of verbal maths puzzles / making up songs as we walk around, plus they've probably been getting more exercise than they do in an average week. I've really enjoyed their company. But aside from the fact that I wouldn't be earning any money if I was home schooling and we couldn't afford to constantly tour the UK trying out all the different activities, there are lots of things that home schooling simply can't provide. They're getting lots of one on one attention, but they're not learning to socialise with other kids or to follow classroom rules, and they're doing very little writing. I couldn't stage a play with a class of 30 kids, or coach a football team, or teach tenor horn, and I wouldn't have the stamina to do a full curriculum from 8:45am to 3:15pm every day. I often take the free education that my children receive for granted, but it's really quite amazing when I think about it.