Visiting Bristol, England And Surrounding Areas

I've spent nearly the last 2 weeks visiting Bristol in England and the surrounding areas. It's bank holiday Monday at the end of May at the time of writing this, so writing on here about my thoughts and experiences so far. I started off staying in a place not in the centre of the city, but on the way out. There are trees and flowers in that area and I'm told you can see the countryside and a tower (which apparently is or used to be part of a hospital). The place I stayed at was above a shop and the bus stop was right near the said shop. In fact the bus stop when arriving in the street turned out to be outside a Chinese takeaway. The takeaway was not a place I tended to frequent because I was mainly wondering around the city centre. The bus goes right to the centre of Bristol and near to where the coaches are. I've written previously on this blog about Suncraft, so I won't write too much about that here, apart from to say I've been there a few more times. The only thing I haven't been a fan of so far was a sort of rice pudding thing, because I didn't like the liquid stuff on top and found that although the rest of the carrot and coconut etc had a good flavor, it was rather dry. I spent nearly a week in the town of Thornbury after that. I like the fact that the town has a lot of greenery and trees and birds, but for a market town there doesn't seem to be much happening. I wanted to go to the farmers' market, but I missed it because it's only on something like every 3rd Thursday of the month. The bus stop was right on the next street from where I was staying, but totally couldn't remember how to get to it. I don't know whether it's because Thornbury is quite a way out of Bristol, but I found a certain bus was never on time if it turned up at all. I was out all day every day last week, so spent a bit of time toodling around Thornbury, but more often than not went into Bristol or the somewhat bigger town of Cribbs Causway, which is part-way between the two. I was doing some research looking for yarn stores to visit in Thornbury, but the only one I found was looking like it might close, as people are buying more online. If it's still open and I'm in the area again, maybe I should go there though. I totally don't need any more yarn but whatever. :) I love indipendent shops, so want to support them. Cribbs Causeway has a shopping centre, but although it has 2 floors, there doesn't seem to be a lot there, at least not unless you want to buy clothes. Having said that though, I did find a "modern vigntage" shop, where even if the things and materials used to make the items were new, the designs on them were over 25 to 30 years old. I always thought vigntage meant something had to be over 50 years old or from a certain time period, or is that antiques? But then antiques are supposed to be over 100 years old, yet I've seen things listed as antiques that were only between 60 and 80 years old. In this particular shop though, there were of course some clothes and shoes and bags, but also some vases in the shape of rabbits which I thought were sweet. Also they had plenty of mugs and plates etc with things written on them or different designs. Also in the shopping centre I found what seemed to be a book shop. I never found out what shop it was, but it seemed to have books that it had already been decided were popular, for example Michelle Obama's book and some fictional things I had never heard of. I find Bristol so far to be a good city for living vegan/vegetarian and 0/low-waste. The only down side is that it's so busy, to the point of asking people where so and so bus is and no one knows what buses go where without looking for directions on their phone. Again I ask myself and others what will people do when the cellphones and wireless internet go crashing down? Speaking of phones, I found a couple of potentially working payphones just near Sainsbury on Gloucester Road in Bristol. Yay for things that actually work! There is a really good fruit and vegetable shop in the same street, selling everything from avocados and oranges to apples and probably carrots and potatoes etc. I even noticed a pineapple in the area outside the shop where the oranges and avocados are. I don't know the name of the shop, but it's across the road from Harvest Natural Foods. Harvest as it says sells natural things from loose oats, rice, lentils etc to vegan and vegetarian cakes and pastries. They also have some reuseable bags both for fruit and vegetables and bigger ones for general stuff. I got myself a couple of the produce bags, which are the smaller ones with plands or at least leaves and stems printed on them. If you want to buy a slice of pie, I would recommend taking your own container because they do tend to fall apart. The pasties are all right to just put in the paper bags though. I just hope my stainless-steel containers will be big enough, or one will for a piece of pie next time, because the pies and pasties are so tasty! Also there are 3 shelves full of aromatherapy oils, so I got a pine one to use with my oil burner. I think I'll try the tip several people keep mentioning of using a little bit of water in the dsh with the oil. At least the ones in Harvest range in price, unlike in Holland And Barett. I found a music shop in Bristol as well, selling records and CDs. Although I didn't buy anything, I was glad to see a music shop still around. I was quite interested in a Japanese shop, but sadly they didn't want me touching the bowls and plates at all just in case they might get broken. I found it kind of weird that there was a tea-set of a teapot and a few cups all nicely in a box, but the plates and dishes were not in anything to protect them. If you don't want people to pick stuff up and look at it, don't even have it on display, or have the sense to put it in it's box so it won't break. I know for a fact I don't break stuff just by touching it, because I was in Marks And Spensor later and looking at loads of things and broke absolutely nothing. Everyone picks things up to look at it closer, otherwise how will you know if you want to buy it? I'm currently in the town of Clevedon in Somerset, which I think I mentioned at the top of this post. Tomorrow I think the green grocer and other shops will be open and back to normal, so I'm going to take a wonder around this town. Yesterday at least for a while, it was drizzly and rainy, then later in the day it was still cloudy. This town is a coastal town with farms and countryside nearby as well. So at times I've been able to hear a number of birds like seagulls and sparrows and pigeons among others all at the same time. Not many birds are out today, but I did hear some seagulls earlier in the morning. This area also has lots of trees. There's plenty of grass too, although I don't understand what people's obsession is with lawns. They want grass, but instead of letting the grass grow wild and be grass, they only let it grow to a certain height and cut it. I'm looking forward to wondering around this town a bit anyway and seeing what it has to offer. The people living at the place I'm staying at now want to try and be more environmentally-friendly, so they thankfully have a decent recycling system by the look of it. They have herbs and fruit and vegetables growing outside and said something about having frogs in a pond as well. This residential area of Clevedon is nice and quiet. Come to think of it, I haven't heard a single car. I have come across the odd person on a bike and of course there are cars, but the main road is not right close to the houses.