This morning I discovered that Dad might be admitted to a hospice. We thought he would be at home for Christmas. I’ve felt shaken for the rest of the day. A part of me throughout has been unable to grasp the reality of what is happening. I’ve been holding onto the fact he’s still with us but I can’t feel myself losing my grip. He’s starting to slip away.
A friend of the family’s – a nurse – revealed something that was also hard to accept. Over the weekend he was unusually cold. He had to have a mohair rug over him and his hands were so cold mum had to hunt round the house and find my brother’s fingerless mits (a Father Christmas present from a few years ago). Mary, the nurse, said it seemed like his body was ‘shutting down’. I wince at that phrase.
She must be right. He’s gone beyond the predicted three months and his movement and thoughts are more and more impaired. And mum is struggling.
I don’t know what to do. After finishing my first feature about education and having sent it off I need to get out: get some air, get some space.
I wasn’t able to walk the Suffolk Coast Path this last weekend. It was too important to be at home. Carpe Diem.
And so to Clifton. My adopted home.
It’s cold but the sun is shining weakly from somewhere in the West beyond the gorge and the bridge. I am wrapped up and head North up Pembroke Road towards The Downs.
All Saints church points to the sky like a vast syringe and needle. These are only a small part of what is left of the original building, the rest having been destroyed by an incendiary bomb in December 1940.
I love the openness of Pembroke Road – its width – and the grandness of the buildings standing either side. In Summer I like to sit outside my window and watch the people and traffic flowing up and down this straight bit of road. Late at night I sometimes hear motorcyclists ragging along this straight bit of road, probably doing at least 60 or 70 mph because it’s so straight.
At the top of Pembroke Road the Downs unfurl themselves. It is as though you have suddenly, inexplicably left the city. Open downland extends for 412 acres and was promised to the people of Bristol by The Clifton and Durdham Downs Act in 1861 as a place of recreation “for ever hereafter open and unenclosed.”
Arriving at the gorge, I’m impressed as always by how quick the transition has been. How I love change in landscape and this one is as dramatic as any. From my house I am 15 minutes walk South to the centre of Bristol and here 15 minutes walk North I am looking at Avonmouth and beyond that, across the Bristol Channel to South Wales. Not bad for a city view.
There is something ancient and sublime – in the old sense of the word – about Avon Gorge. Today it terrifies me but fascinates me at the same time. Its steep drops. Its strange contours and sharp edges where some huge force in the long distant past gouged out this channel through the limestone.
The world seems colder, harsher somehow. I have a feeling of a world that I hadn’t known existed before. A hard and ancient world, with no understanding of such petty fancies as human love.
The River Avon has one of the greatest tidal reaches in the world. It can rise up to 15 metres at its highest, transforming the view that I’m looking down on from the edge of the Down.
I turn upstream along a meandering path, which seems to mirror the shape of the river a hundred metres below me. The walls of the gorge are popular with climbers but I know below me and further North at Sea Mills there are large caves within the limestone.
Listening to Derren Brown on Desert Island Discs a few months ago he talked about how as a rather eccentric student at Bristol University he would come and read poetry on his own in a cave overlooking Bristol Gorge and I wonder where it is.
In the Summer, there are always groups of young people who climb over the fence at various points along here and find a spot to drink and play music a bit closer to the drop. Here is also a regular haunt of Peregrine Falcons who can be seen plummeting at incredible speeds down vertically towards the water.
The path continues from Clifton Down for a short way before turning abruptly left as the gorge opens out and there is just half the iconic bridge disappearing into the land on the left.
I think of the many stories of people who have leapt from this bridge. The most famous probably being of Sarah Ann Henley, a barmaid from Easton, who jumped from the bridge on Friday May 8th 1885. Apparently the updraft under her large skirt slowed her fall and directed her away from the water and she landed in the tidal mud.
According to Wikipedia:
“An article dated 16 May 1885 in the City Notes of a local newspaper, the Bristol Magpie, reports as follows:
The rash act was the result of a lovers quarrel. A young man, a porter on the Great Western Railway, determined to break off the engagement, wrote a letter to the young woman announcing his intention. This preyed on the girl’s mind, and she, in a state of despair, rushed to end her life by the fearful leap from the Suspension Bridge.
After her landing in the thick mud of low-tide, two passers-by, John Williams and George Drew, rushed to her assistance.[3] They found her in a state of severe shock, but alive..”
Between 1974 and 1993 a total of 127 people fell to their deaths from the bridge. In 1998 barriers were erected along the sides to try to prevent people from jumping but it still happens.
I remember driving back from a day at school in Taunton one beautiful Summer’s day and as I drove over the bridge a girl of probably 19 or 20 was being cradled by one of the security guards who man the road barriers at each end of the bridge. She had climbed over the railings but was being cradled by the guard hanging over the 245 feet drop.
Yet I don’t want to make grim associations with one of my favourite constructions anywhere in the world. I love that bridge. The journey home from the West is one of the finest entries to a city anywhere in the world. That and crossing the Williamsburg Bridge to Manhattan Island.
I leave the gorge behind me and head back through the back streets of Clifton. Some students from Clifton College, dressed in navy blue blazers, are coming out of the old buildings of their school. I remember the feeling of the end of the Christmas term and the excitement it brings.
My loop is almost completed as I arrive back on Pembroke Road, the strangeness of those hybrid churches, my vast neighbours looming over me as I hasten back to the flat.
When I arrive home there are 2 boxes waiting for me. They are boxes of beer, an early Christmas present from Dad with a short note saying ‘Happy Christmas. Love from Mum and Dad.’
I sit at the small table in the kitchen with the card open in my hand. And I cry.
The Slow Walker 