Back on Mother's Day, my boys and I had a wander along the footpath that runs from Shirehampton to Sea Mills, whence we had a rather impressive view of Horseshoe Bend on the River Avon.
Son the Elder is acting at the moment, but Son the Younger and hairy, black-and-white Son decided to make good our promise to ourselves to walk it some time.
We parked on Marine Parade, Pill, on the North Somerset bank of the River Avon, with views down to the motorway bridge at Avonmouth and upstream towards Horseshoe Bend.
We started our walk by heading up Crockerne Pill, which is the name of the pill that gives Pill its name.
Crockerne means pottery, which was made and shipped from here between 1100 to 1250AD.
Mainly, though, Pill made its living from the river.
It was home to the pilots who used to compete with each other to guide ships up and down the rocky, muddy, River Avon with its treacherous currents and huge tides. (This was before the docks relocated to Avonmouth.)
We ascended Watch House Hill, and reached Ham Green Lakes, which were landscaped in the 18th century as part of the eponymous estate.
A little further on, we regained the Avon.
This is the Old Powder House, which we also spotted on our Mother's Day walk. It was where ships' crews were obliged to offload gun powder and other inflammable materials before they reached the port in the centre of Bristol.
Up there, near the top of the cliff, is the layby on the Portway ...
... where these spliced-together photos were taken in March.
The curve of the bend delineated in vegetation
Every now and then we passed toadstools, which were once mooring posts, of course, and reminded me of the walk Ted (the dog) and I did some years ago with Dru Marland and John Terry, along the opposite bank from Sea Mills dock. There, too, were reminders of the river's history of shipping.
In fact, we'd walked nearly as far as Sea Mills, standing across the river on its own muddy pill, and it was time to retrace our steps.
A narrowboat pootled past.
And then a train, headed for Shirehampton, Avonmouth and maybe even the louche delights of Severn Beach.
And then Bristol Packet's Bagheera, loaded with tourists on a sight-seeing trip.
It was a lot busier in the past.
Back at Ham Green Lakes, a gaggle of geese had taken to the water. Ted wisely ignored both them ...
... and this bruiser. What a Magnificat.
Our route took us past Ham Green House. Like Goldney House, Redland Court and Kings Weston House, it's another of those grand, Demerara-coloured houses in and around Bristol that are connected to the slave trade.
In 1899 it was bought by Bristol Corporation and turned into an isolation hospital. Two of my uncles were incarcerated there in the 1950s with TB.
And it too has a guard-cat.
From Watch House Hill there was a fine view of the M5 bridge and a large ship leaving Avonmouth Docks ...
... while back down in the village, the tide was now much higher than when we'd arrived.
We paused at the stone commemorating the 1771 departure for America of Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke, who were to become the first superintendents of the Methodist Church in America.
The former Watch House of the Customs and Excise
And then it was time to leave lovely, not-quite-so-muddy Pill and head for home. Perhaps we'll walk more of the River Avon another afternoon.
Some of our party were ill-shod for serious walking so we went for what you might call a preamble, along the footpath that runs from Shirehampton to Sea Mills, between the Portway and railway track and River Avon - a section of urban edgelands none of us had visited before.
Below us the River Avon, looking steely.
I'd also settled on this route because I wanted to view horseshoe bend, graveyard of many boats and ships when Bristol's dock was sited at the Floating Harbour rather than Avonmouth.
This was the best shot I could manage without a wide-angle lens ...
... and this is a cheat, spliced together but giving a better view of what it looks like.
Just visible on the right hand bank in this photo is the Old Powder House, where vessels were required to off-load gun powder and other inflammable materials before they reached the port in the centre of Bristol.
The path dips up and down between the road and the railway track.
Shirehampton Park
A scattering of bluebells
We stopped just short of Sea Mills and retraced our steps. I found myself wondering whether William and Dorothy Wordsworth took this route when returning from Joseph Cottle's bookshop in Bristol to their lodgings in Shirehampton.
They probably wouldn't have seen a train, not back in 1798.
Exploring a corner of the city for the first time is always enjoyable ...
... especially when the company is good.
After half a century plus of living in Bristol (give or take a few years of exile in the middle), it's always a bit of a thrill to find somewhere new to visit, especially when it's a nature reserve right in the middle of the city. So off it was to one of the most affluent parts of the city, Snide Park.
OK, so it's Sneyd Park really. Snide Park is what we used to call it when we were kids, living on the wrong side of the B4054 Henleaze Road. The name has stuck - and so have I.
Look, you can tell it's dead posh by its oak-framed information board.
The moment you leave gracious suburbia, you're in Bishops Knoll, once part of a mediaeval deer park and later, in the 19th century, the gardens of a (now demolished) mansion, complete with terraces, an arboretum, orchards, lawns and paddocks. We stuck to the footpath through woodlands to get down to Bennett's Patch and White's Paddock, alongside the River Avon, being inspected all the way down by a persistent Southern Hawker.
Being next to the river means it's also alongside the Portway, one of the busiest and fastest roads in the city, and the Severn Beach line - between the two, in fact, and very noisy. But I have a handy trick for dealing with that, which is to pretend the traffic is the ice-age torrent that originally carved the Gorge. That way it doesn't impinge after a while.
Our reason for coming here was to see the whales in their new home. Well - not real ones, obviously; rather, the wicker ones designed by Cod Steaks, which graced Bristol during the city's stint as European Green Capital (back in the halycon days before our ex-Prime Minister asked a stupid question and got a very stupid answer).
Here they are in their sea of plastic bottles in Millennium Square, exactly a year ago.
And now they are surfacing in the city's newest nature reserve.
It's an appropriate place for them to find a home because in 1750, the ship Adventure brought back two whales, which were rendered to blubber just up the road at Sea Mills Dock. The venture into the whaling trade continued for almost 50 years.
Instead of going back over the railway bridge, we walked down to the tunnel that goes under the track.
Being a geek, I was excited to spot a brick from the old Cattybrook Brickworks near Almondsbury - one of those names I hope to fit into a poem one day.
Then one last glimpse of the whales through the trees and home.
Son the Elder is acting at the moment, but Son the Younger and hairy, black-and-white Son decided to make good our promise to ourselves to walk it some time.
We started our walk by heading up Crockerne Pill, which is the name of the pill that gives Pill its name.
And then Bristol Packet's Bagheera, loaded with tourists on a sight-seeing trip.
