Bristol

Business lunch! With Terry and Sue

A sociable week, alternating with rain and chilling. Tuesday we went back into a very wet Bristol, on the bus, to meet up with Terry and Sue, Brian’s ex business partner. They haven’t moved here or anything, but are both originally from here, and visit often, Terry’s sister lives in Clifton. They suggested meeting up in the Cosy Club, which was fabulous. It used to be a bank and had wonderful internal architecture, ornate high ceilings, and hard wood floors, so not very cosy, but we had all afternoon to chat before it started getting busy and loud. Lovely day, really enjoyed it.

Wednesday, a message from Iain, sent Brian down the road to get £30 of fuel at the local, independent, garage, hurrah. We then went for a nice little walk down and round Pill making the most of the sunshine (have a look at our short Relive video of the route with photos: click here).

Thursday wet again, but we’ve had a breakthrough. Tinsel, the ‘slightly skitty’ cat (or psycho as Iain calls her) has decided we are both good for cuddles. I came into the lounge to find her on the stairs, but she didn’t want fuss there, she jumped onto the table, and onto the back of the chair I sit in, chirping all the while

Cutie Tinsel cat

till I sat when she was straight onto my knee. Brian has had similar, she’s led him up two flights of stairs to our attic room, stopping to check he’s following before jumping on the bed and miaowing till he sat on the bed so she could lie on him. It’s all very lovely. There has still been odd bits of weeing in the kitchen, a long-standing problem, but they have had an intruder cat breaking in. The cat flap is locked at nighttime, but he seems to just barge his way through, pinging the locking knob across the room! Bound to be unnerving, though he came in last evening while Tinsel was on my lap, and Millie was asleep in the kitchen. She didn’t seem at all phased by a strange cat walking through the kitchen to eat biscuits!

Off to Sainsbury’s to find fuel with no queue, 3p/litre cheaper than Brian had paid the previous day, so filled up with another £20 worth. We are off to Marlborough on Sunday, before Avebury on Monday for Brian to start his walk while I go back to the Midlands. I’ve obviously got to then go and collect him when he finishes, so I don’t think we were ‘panic buying’. For those interested, click here to see the Ridgeway Trail route description (87 miles in 6 days) and click here to open Google Maps to see the route.

Millie cat being scratched in just the right place

A grand night out in Bristol with Paul

Friday back into Bristol to meet Paul who was one of the team of 4, with Brian, who did the South Downs 100km in 30 hours for Oxfam when he first retired (here's a link to our blog entry of that 100km walk in 2012: click here). He then appeared in Morzine when we were on one of our ski seasons with the other two walkers and two other guys. There had just been a great dump of snow which facilitated a ridiculous few days skiing with them, but we haven’t seen him since (here's a link to those crazy few days skiing with them: click here). We had a fabulous evening, learning more about him than we ever knew, he’s about to leave the RAF after 35 years and set up a property maintenance business in Cornwall.... we might have to go and visit!

King Street, Bristol on a Friday night in October - it's buzzing!

Much beer was drunk in some of Bristol’s many watering holes, food was eaten and talking, talking, talking! Consequently today had a slow and fuzzy start with much fuss from Tinsel on the bed. It’s done nothing but rain all day, so Bev and Iain are on their way home, so we can do more talking!

Next time, there will be two blogs, one from me, and one from him, that’ll be a first!

The village of Pill, the River Avon and the viaduct over the M5