The neighborhood: I live on Bristol’s ‘Floating Harbor’, a modification to the tidal portion of the Avon River that was made over 200 years ago, to allow trading vessels to stay afloat (and trade) throught the tidal cycle. I live at the west end of the harbor, just above the ‘Brunel lock’. Brunel was a famous engineer who saw the big picture of transportation – he also designed the train station and build the SS Great Britain, the world’s first iron ocean liner (I’ll do a separate blog on a Brunel tour of Bristol!). My little waterway sits at right angles to the Floating Harbor… according to my ‘Bristol Harbor Heritage Trail’ book, it was established as a dry dock for shipbuilders in 1772… most recently it apparently was home to Bristol’s fleet of sand-dredging ships, until they left in 1991 and my development was constructed.
My house: My house is a “terrace house” (what we would call a row house), but it’s on the end of the row… the only silly thing about this cookie cutter style of house-building is that, even though I have a great south-facing exposure, there are no windows on the south side (so Andie, if I’m going to join the passive solar experiment it will have to be from the perspective of oblique passive solar!). BUT as you can see, I have wonderful big east-(and water-)facing windows in both the kitchen (first floor) and living room (second floor). I also have a nice tiny little garden out front where I can sit and drink my morning coffee and watch the water…
A couple of days ago, two rowboat owners took advantage of the early morning glassy stillness of the water in the form of a morning row… I was jealous! Clearly I need to start making friends with my neighbors!!! (or buy myself a rowboat) so that I can participate in the ebb and flow of boat traffic on the river. There are several rowers that appear in the early morning – in both skinny racing shells and larger sturdier boats (can’t remember what they’re called – I know that Ken has rowed one). Then the sailboats come out in the afternoon, when the wind picks up. Mostly the winds seem moderate and good for small boat sailing. Except when we caught the edge of Hurricane Katia – the wind was really howling all day on Monday - a little flock of kayakers eddied out in our protected water space, when the wind picked up too much.
Now for the room you’ve all been waiting for – the guest room! It’s on the same floor as the living room and has its own (quite tiny) bathroom and shower. Looks west rather than east, but is a nice light room. At the moment it has a saggy single bed – I promise that it will soon have an un-saggy double bed and towels! The western end of the hallway has a pretty little stained-glass window, at the base of the stairs to the third floor, which has two rooms plus a bathroom. I’ve taken the west-facing room as my bedroom because there are several built-in closets. Am planning to turn the east-facing (water and hill view) room into a study, although at the moment it has only another very saggy bed which I’ll need to get rid of… but I do just wander into the room in the morning to gaze out the window – I love the colorful row houses up on the hill. The bathroom deserves mention not only because it has a shower (rather than just a bath) but also because the water pressure is very un-British (Ken – I won’t need that booster so you’re absolved of that particular duty!!).
The process: As expected, the UK is pretty efficient, so that the process of renting my house, getting a bank account, etc. has gone fairly smoothly. It’s interesting to see ways in which things are run differently here – most notably, all utilities, banking, etc is done either on-line or by direct payment from your bank account (which means that one has to have a bank account before setting up anything else). And the electric bill is done with an estimated payment – the meter is checked only every three months, and payment adjusted then! The University internet is also interesting – after registering with the wifi network eduroam, I can hop on University internet networks not only all over the UK, but also across Europe (and, I think, beyond)… very civilized.
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