Our Fifth Day in England

Monday, April 3rd

The river in front of Rownham Mead is the Avon River Slough, and is affected by the tides off of the Bristol Channel.  The tides at Bristol are very severe and run up to thirty feet from high to low tide.  In the days of old, this was an advantage because the outgoing tide would leave the boats high and dry, allowing repair and maintenance to the boat bottoms.  Having the boats go dry was a disadvantage to cargo loading, and general commerce.  So to keep the harbor wet during periods of low tides (twice a day), Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed a set of locks on the river.  At high tide, water would flow in and fill the harbor.  The locks would then be closed and the water in the harbor held during the low tide and the boats in the harbor would stay afloat.  If a boat is in the harbor, wanting to leave, it would either have to wait for the next high tide or could be lowered via the locks to the level of the river.  The area upstream of the locks has become known as the "floating harbor".  Thus, the boats in the floating harbor were free of the annoying affect of the tides.  [found out that Brunel only designed improvements to the locks - the locks were pre-existing] Rownham Mead faces onto the Floating Harbor with Brunel's locks at the right end of the property.  Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a big time engineer and inventor in this area and was born 200 years ago.  Bristol will be celebrating his accomplishment over the next couple of weeks and we (and you) will learn a lot more about him in the weeks to follow. One of the features of the Floating Harbor is a boat taxi service.  Water taxis circumnavigate the harbor and make a regular route from our quay to downtown Bristol and another taxi carries passengers from the downtown to the train station, Temple Mead.  Brunel designed both Temple Mead Station and the railroad itself.

Same Taxi having passed us

Water Taxi looking east from the quay in front of Rownham Mead

Today was bright and sunny.  We were expecting Bruce and Pam to fly in from San Francisco today and wanted to take them to see the city and not put too much strain on their jet lag fatigued bodies.  This seemed like an outstanding time to try the water taxi.  As it turns out, we didn't leave enough time to research this endeavor properly.  Although the taxis are a great idea, the reality is somewhat disappointing.  The taxies run, but this time of year the schedule is rather hit or miss. Bruce and Pam are on their way to Nottingham for a two-month house exchange.  Actually they have two house exchanges: one for two weeks with the couple from Virginia (they have already been to Virginia but the other couple hasn't reciprocated until now) and the one in England.  The timing didn't quite work out, so they ended up displaced persons, destined to walk the dark and dreary streets.  We are thrilled to have them join us here in Bristol before they head off to Nottingham.  We'll be exploring and experiencing some of the "firsts" with them as they settle into the new time zone.  Bruce and Pam arrived at our doorstep a half an hour earlier than the earliest that we expected.    Their flight was early; they breezed through customs at the airport, got a cab and were here by 10 o'clock.  They moved right in and were ready to explore what Bristol had to offer in a very short time.  After discussing what we had in mind, it was decided that we would walk to the Broadmead shopping center, have some lunch and help Nancy with some of her shopping and taxi home.  Nancy still has things that she wants for the flat, but the list is getting shorter and the flat is getting quite comfortable.  We picked up a whole lot of miscellaneous "stuff" like a clothes-drying rack, computer printer paper, knives, placemats, some scotch tape, etc.  There was lots of stuff but when divided up among the four of us it was quite manageable.  Everything worked as planned and we decided to walk back. (Every time we make the trip into town the trip gets a little shorter).  We even stopped at the library and signed up for our library cards and access to the Internet.  Jerry is still trying to get through to the phone company and spent many trips going to the public phone down the street and wasn't able to reach them.  We're hoping he can reach the person tomorrow so we can set up the appointment to get our phone installed.  Cooked a nice dinner for Bruce and Pam and found out we need to get some things for the kitchen so we can bake items in the oven.  Got creative and used the pans and spices we had on hand and it turned out just fine.  Now, we need to go the grocery store again.  As expected, our refrigerator is tiny.  The one in the RV is larger than this one, but it does have a freezer.  Still need to get some ice cube trays - haven't found them yet.  We'll be visiting some "charity" shops, i.e., thrift stores, in the next couple of days to pick up odds and ends.  When we can find them. note: never did find any ice cube trays as we know them, but did find several rubber trays that made ice cubes in the shape of fish, penguins, letters, etc,

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