Key to photos

UPPER ROW (left to right): Avon Suspension Bridge; the Avon River meets the Floating Harbor; red doorway; view SW across the Avon R.; self-explanatory; Wills Memorial Building (which houses the Geology Dept); a 'crescent'; a narrow boat on the Avon Canal
LOWER ROW (left to right): Terrace houses; Banksy street art; downtown Bristol; the Matthew (a replica of a boat that Cabot sailed across the Atlantic); the Grain Barge (my favorite pub); my new neighborhood (new photos to come once I move); rowing on the Floating Harbor

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Hotwells pubs

You can tell that I’m recovering from my flu bug - I decided to do this week’s blog on my neighborhood pubs... probably only the first installment on this topic! According to “Old Inns of Bristol” (my source of information for much of the material presented here), as of 2005 there were 771 public houses in Bristol - one for everyone 600 people. This number is down substantially from 1750, when there were 850 pubs (and approximately 100,000 people, or one pub for every 117 people)... but I’ll limit myself primarily to  pubs around my neighborhood of Hotwells and the west end of the Floating Harbor. Here, too, the pub count has diminished dramatically from the good old days - whereas there were apparently two dozen pubs on Hotwells Road in 1895, I’m now limited to a mere 6 pubs that I consider to be within my immediate neighborhood (a number that increases to at least 9 or 10 if I expand to within a ten minute walk)...

First some background and vocabulary. A British pub (public house) is different from most American bars, in that it is really a social gathering place - and everyone has their ‘local’. Old-fashioned pubs are often quite cosy; many have games (scrabble, chess cribbage) parked in a corner - it’s not uncommon to see a group of people playing cards or a board game, settled in for the evening. Pubs may be “free houses” - which means that they are established independently of any specific brewery - or they may be sponsored, or owned, by a brewery. British pubs all feature colorful painted signs. Apparently this is a legacy from a 1393 law enacted by Richard II and designed to make pubs identifiable for inspectors, tax collectors etc. At that time, many people were illiterate, so that the signs featured pictures as well as words. Pub signs now seem to be an art form... reminds me of my first real encounter with pub signs, in the Fells Point (dockyards) region of Baltimore. Seems like pub sign painting would be a fun career (I did look on line and find at least one such pub sign artist in Bristol!). Some pubs also boast a “cask marque”, a fairly new designation that is awarded to pubs who serve their cask-conditioned ales properly (proper temperature, quality, freshness).

Now to the neighborhood pubs. I’ll start with two of the oldest, neither of which I’ve visited, one because it’s now shut (the Plume of Feathers) and one biker bar (the Mardyke). It’s too bad the Plume of Feathers closed, as it had apparently been in business since 1775! The Mardyke goes back to 1865, at which time it was located immediately across the street from the Mardyke ferry, which transported workers back and forth across the Floating Harbor to the dockyards (an obvious location for a pub...).

Another pub that traces its history back to the days when Hotwells was the location of numerous working dockyards is the Nova Scotia, which advertises itself as “circa 1811”. My book speculates that the name records the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, in which France ceded Nova Scotia to England. The mahogany counter in the pub was apparently originally built for a ship but was the wrong shape, so ended up in the pub. The interior is decorated with faded charts and old photographs... it’s a little dingy now but has outside seating in the summer, with views across to the row of quaint “Dock Cottages” and down the Cumberland Basin and locks at the end of the harbor. It’s still a local pub for dockyard workers.

From the Nova Scotia it’s a short walk through the Underfall shipyard [the "underfall" refers to the spillover from the harbor to the "cut", or Avon River diversion] The Cottage Inn. This pub gets its name because its early Victorian building was originally the cottage that belonged to Bristol’s harbor master. Now it is noteworthy (from my perspective) because it is right next to the Baltic Wharf Sailing Club, and therefore the post-race hangout for the dinghy sailors. Like the Nova Scotia, the Cottage Inn has lots of wonderful old photos on the walls - it also has nice outdoor seating that is occupied in all except the most inclement conditions.

Circling back to my (north) side of the Floating Harbor one finds the Merchant Arms. This pub is probably named for the Merchants Dock of 1765, which used to occupy the location of my housing development (Rownham Mead). The eponymous merchants certainly refers to the “Merchant Venturers”, a very old Bristol merchants guild that, among other things, funded John Cabot’s Newfoundland voyage, and promoted colonization of North America. They still control a number of charity organizations in Bristol. The Merchant Arms is owned by the Bath Ales brewery, with its distinctive hare logo (and numerous hare puns in their beer names!). It’s a nice old-fashioned pub - two tiny rooms (one used to be the public bar, the other the lounge bar, back when such distinctions were made) and pressed tin walls painted a mustard yellow; frosted windows sporting the Bath hare logo; random paintings on the wall; a stack of games in the corner.

Closest to home is the Pump House, which is really more a first class restaurant than a traditional pub. The building was constructed in 1871 to house the machinery that controlled the gates of the locks. It’s beautifully restored inside, has beautiful historic photographs and has great outdoor seating for nice weather. The food is excellent, and it offers a range of beers and wine (including, usually, Bath ales but also beer from the Cheddar Gorge and other nearby environs). It has a cosy room with couches for game playing; we have also discovered that on alternate Wednesday evenings the knitting group meets here! They offer homemade bread, fresh eggs, and various preserves, pickles, and dried mushrooms for sale.

And last but not least, the Grain Barge. This is the pub that I consider my ‘local’, primarily because it’s the most Eugene-like establishment around. It lies on the other side of my little blue bridge, and across the street from the Mardyke. It’s on an old grain barge that is moored at the edge of the harbor, and is owned by the Bristol Beer Factory. The BBF makes several American style hopped beers - my favorite is Southville Hop (the closest thing I’ve found in Bristol to a PNW-style IPA), though they also sell an Independence Ale that is fairly hoppy. The atmosphere is casual and the ambience low key, particularly in the late afternoon when the low angle sun pours in the windows before the lights around the harbor slowly start to come on and reflect different colors on the water.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Kathy goes to Ethiopia

January 7, 2012  Arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia ... I realize that more than thirty (!) years have elapsed since my only other visit to the African continent. So what was I doing in Ethiopia? I was invited to attend a workshop held by a consortium who have been studying an unusual geologic episode in northern Ethiopia, where the Red Sea rift is extending into the continent (a form of sub-aerial sea floor spreading, for the geologists!). We arrived only to realize that Ethiopia, which is on a Julian (Orthodox) calendar (in contrast to our Gregorian calendar), was celebrating Christmas that day... moveover, in Ethiopia the year is 2004 [an instantaneous gift of 8 years!].  In the Julian calendar there are 13 months - twelve months of 30 days each, plus an additional month of 5 or 6 days (depending on whether or not it’s a leap year). The year starts in September. Apparently the 8 year discrepancy between the Julian and Gregorian calendar derives from differences in determining the date of the Annunciation of Jesus. Ethiopia (like most of equatorial Africa) also uses a different clock. They have a 24 hour day, but their midnight is our 6am. It’s actually quite logical - one o’clock (7am) is when the sun has been up for one hour (and so on). Makes sense when the days are approximately 12 hours long throughout the year...

The biggest consequence of Christmas for us was that most tourist places were closed - including the National Museum, which is supposed to be excellent. The most famous exhibit at the museum is a cast of Lucy, the 3.2 million year old Australopithecus fossil, which was found in Ethiopia’s Awash Valley in 1974. However, the museum also covers Ethiopia’s long and rich history, as well as its current diversity - 79 different tribes (each with its own language)!  So Jon Blundy and I went on a tour of the tourist hotels (which WERE open so that we could find some lunch) and part of the city center. Of particular note was the coffee ceremony at one of the hotels... the traditional coffee ceremony includes incense, popcorn (not sure why), and freshly roasted and ground coffee beans. The coffee was incredibly good, with an aroma and complex flavor unlike any other coffee I’ve had. Perhaps its not surprising that the birthplace of man is also the birthplace of coffee. We also walked past the UN Economic Commission for Africa, with its ceremonial circle of flags representing all of the countries of Africa. When I realized how few flags I recognized, it really hit me how little I know about the entire continent!

The next day we left on a three-day field trip around part of the Main Ethiopian Rift Valley. For those of you who know as little about Ethiopia as I did, here’s a quick overview. The country sits at the northern end of the East African Rift. The highlands reach elevations > 4000 m (some of the highest mountains in Africa), while the Danakil depression extends to 100 m below sea level. The country is land-locked, separated from the Red Sea by Eritrea (which was part of Ethiopia from 1952 to 1993), and from the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean by Djibouti and Somalia. The capital Addis Ababa is at an elevation of about 2300 m... the official language is Amharic, which is written using the Ge’ez script (see the Merry Christmas sign for an example!). The food is also distinctive - most characteristic is the injera, a fermented reticulated slightly sour pancake made of the native grain teff, and used like a tortilla to scoop up the rest of the meal - mostly tasty spicy meat stews.

From Addis we drove south, gradually making our way down the margin of the rift valley, dropping to the valley floor at Lake Zwai - the lake has several small islands, one of which, according to local legend, housed the Arc of the Covenant (the chest containing the tablets with the Ten Commandments) after the destruction of Aksum in the 9th century (they claim to still possess the Arc, which has now been returned to Aksum/Axum). The former kingdom of Aksum (now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea) was an important trading center during the first millenium; it also was an early convert to Christianity, which remains the dominant religion. The Ethiopians also proudly trace their history back to the Queen of Sheba (who made a famous visit to King Solomon and may be the object of many of the Biblical Song of Songs) - according to the Ethiopians, Solomon and Sheba had a son - Menelik I - who was crowned the first King of Ethiopia (and who brought the Arc of the Convenant to the country).

SO - the rift valley. It’s the dry (Bega) season, so my overwhelming impression of the landscape was arid. However, the rift valley is dotted with lakes (some fairly large), which draw people and animals to their shores. In fact, the birds were amazing... but perhaps the most notable critters are the hippos that live in some of the lakes (I heard one one morning when I went out to look at the birds... but I didn’t quite believe that it was a hippo so I didn’t look for it!). Much of the rift valley floor is inhabited - mostly scattered clusters of small round wood-framed thatched huts (I think they are called “iss”) in neat compounds. Depending on elevation, the compounds were surrounded by bananas, or fenced by eucalyptus, or prickly pear cactus... a few sported motorcycles in the yard. There are also some towns, crowded with people and vehicles (including dozens of little 3-wheeled taxis) and donkey carts and bicycles and... smaller towns had small shops concentrated along the single main street - typically every little town had a mosque on one side of the street and a Christian church on the other side, the two structures distinguished by both the icon on the steeple and the shape of the building... the mosques are typically painted in bright colors and have a very skinny tall tower that boasts a loudspeaker for the 5-times-a-day call to prayer. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any pictures of the mosques (just admired them out of the bus window). There was also constant traffic along the side of the road: kids, kids herding cattle, kids herding goats, kids herding donkeys, donkeys pulling carts laden with wood, or water, or.. More people emerged with the setting sun - like Italy, where the evening cool is the social time of the day.

Most notable about our field trip stops are the children, who seem to spring giggling from the very soil wherever we stop... even when the landscape appeared empty initially, within seconds there would be kids running toward us from all directions - no wonder Ethiopia rakes in Olympic medals in distance running! They formed a curious audience... clustered behind us, mimicking our cluster around our field trip leaders. 
And then of course there were the volcanoes... the entire rift valley is volcanic, starting with the eruption of flood basalts about 30 million years ago (which are now exposed in the rift valley scarps). The volcanoes in the southern rift valley aren't very active, although there are a few historic accounts of eruptions, mostly of cinder cones, although it is the central volcanoes that are most striking (like Fentale volcano, shown below).