Bristol

Gate 17, Bristol Airport. 18.52.

Blimey, but it’s hot outside. If the hordes of ruddy topless locals in the streets of Bristol weren’t enough of an indication, then the winged ants might have been. They always seem to appear out of nowhere when the heat reaches its apogee. Where I’m going, it’s a full ten degrees hotter, and here I am with a cardigan tied about my waist. I felt just slightly insane packing the cardigan, but it’s best to be prepared for all eventualities – especially when I’m up in the mountains. Heatwave or no heatwave, a lot can happen over the course of six weeks.

Check-in at Bristol was a breeze – unless you count the security team selecting my satchel for “explosive checks”. I’m not sure what they expected to find in there: seven different grades of black pen, a rubber, a pencil sharpener, three pencils, three empty pilgrim passports, a hand-drawn map, a very battered journal and a rosary of La Virgen del Rocío… but no explosives. I’m not sure they’d fit! My rucksack might be light but my satchel is, as ever, full to bursting.

I broke the habit of a lifetime and lingered in duty free, where I picked up a few last minute supplies: namely, a solar battery pack and a watch. I’ve left the guidebooks behind this time, and I’m trusting in the plans I scribbled down on three flashcards (spot the teacher), but if it comes to it, I’ll need my phone for navigation. There’s a few stops without electricity on my itinerary, and sometimes you don’t get a bed near the sockets, so a battery pack is a pretty good investment for a trip like this.

Lord knows I’ll be moving and removing the watch a lot this summer to avoid getting a watch-strap tan, but I figured it was high time I had something to look at when I hold up my wrist.

It’s funny how regional Bristol feels. Half the tannoy voices are human (London’s human airport staff bowed out of their tannoy duties years ago), and with the automated RP infiltrating just about every corner of the country these days, it’s curious to hear the voice over the speakers drag the not-so-gentle R in airport. Sometimes it feels like the only place you’ll find the West Country burr that was once so widespread is on public transport. It’s a shame. It’s really quite endearing.

My flight is at 19.25, so I had an early dinner. My usual compulsion for continuity set in, so I grabbed a burrito from the Real California stand upstairs. I had my first non-school burrito in Chicago O’Hare International Airport at the end of my American adventure, so it makes sense to start the next grand adventure with one, too.

It’s a busier flight than I expected. Mind, it is a Sunday night – if anybody were here for the weekend, I suppose this would be the obvious flight home. I’m hoping the public transport situation at the other end is more reliable than the one in Tenerife, as I don’t really fancy another late night wander. All being well, I should be in bed by midnight, and it’s not a dreadfully early start tomorrow to catch the southbound train, but I would like to see a little of the city before I go, so I might start the early morning routine and grab a bite to eat.

After Bordeaux, we’re into the swing of things. I haven’t booked anything beyond the connecting train to Oloron-Sainte-Marie, so I’m putting my trust in God and the road. For somebody who genuinely despises planning in advance, the Camino is the very best sort of holiday. I have no doubt that there will be trials ahead, but that only makes the adventure all the more exciting. We don’t get an awful lot of real adventures in the day-to-day of adult life, so I’m off chasing dreams again. Only this time they’re not red-haired and American, but European and full of light and love.

I’d better save my phone battery and stop blogging. I expect we’ll be boarding soon. Oh – and there’s the bell. À bientôt.

BB x

Three weeks of the summer holidays remain, which I must now try to fill somehow. Yesterday I went up to Bristol – for better shopping, primarily, but also because I’d never been, and there’s at least a couple of things in this city that I wanted to achieve: a new suit for work, and a close encounter with arguably one of the most famous statues in the country.

Bristol was not as busy as I expected, but then, with all this talk of protest in the air, perhaps that’s not surprising. Despite the official line from the police to the contrary, at least two shopkeepers warned me to get out of town before 6pm. They said that a mob was being gathered online to march on an immigration legal aid firm in the Old Market district, not more than five minutes or so from Bristol Temple Meads Station. I passed several shops with signs in the windows indicating an early closure, and I saw at least one being boarded up, just in case things got out of hand.

Part of me considered sticking around to see what went down, but for once, the rational part of my brain (which usually plays second-fiddle to the romantic up there) took charge and sent me home. Still, it was quite something to see a city preparing for potentially violent civil unrest, like a quiet siege. It was rather eerie. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

As it happens, there was a protest march that evening – but not the one that was expected. Nearly two thousand anti-racists staged a peaceful counter-protest in Bristol’s Old Market, where the anti-immigration rally was due to take place. My faith in this country has been restored, even if only by a little.

I visited the M Shed Museum in the Bristol dockyards, where the statue of Edward Colston can now be seen after it was recovered from the bottom of the harbour. Social media played a decisive role in mobilising the mob back then, too, albeit under very different circumstances.

Colston rests in a glass sarcophagus surrounded by a collection of placards borne by those who tore him from his plinth back in 2020. It looks almost like one of the stone effigies you might find in a cathedral, with homemade banners replacing the coats of arms.

Colston used much of the wealth that he accrued from his involvement with the Atlantic slave trade to philanthropic ends in Bristol and beyond, establishing almshouses and sponsoring schools. For more than two hundred years, he was even something of a local hero. But times have changed since the events of 2020, and a much-needed revision of the history books has shed a new darkness on men like Colston who, for all their good deeds, were active participants in a system which brought unimaginable misery, pain and slaughter to millions. Colston had many hats, but “slave trader” is usually the first title next to his name in most accounts.

I wonder if history will see modern “heroes” like Steve Jobs in the same light someday for their involvement in the rape of the Congo and its people for the coltan that powers our phones. We may be reliant on the damned things for just about everything these days, but that’s a poor excuse, when you think about it. After all, we used a similar excuse to justify the entire slave trade once upon a time.

I did a little window-shopping before popping into a second-hand vinyl store in search of a couple of albums for my wall. I’m in the process of making my house a really happy space, and I figured I’d take a leaf out of the book of my old bandleader (and great inspiration), Mr D, and frame a few LP sleeves. I was tempted by a couple of colourful Fela Kuti numbers, but in the end I came away with just the one LP: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, one of “the Big Three” albums that changed my life, alongside MJ’s Thriller and The Corrs’ Forgiven Not Forgotten. I’ll hunt the other two down on eBay.

Until the next time! BB x