Brizzle

Leigh doesn't work Fridays and has now finished teaching for the year, and I'm well behind on taking leave. What further excuse is needed for a long weekend away?

We decided upon Bristol as the first night's destination, as I've never been (other than a childhood visit in about 1990 to what at the time was a sad-looking zoo), yet hear good things. We pored over Wikitravel on the way and it whet the appetite. Each district was described as multicultural and eclectic and many sights were promoted. We resolved that we only had time for a cursory overview, scoping for future visits.

We were concerned that driving towards the south west on the day schools break up was poor decision-making. It was largely smooth except for some congestion around Bicester, with hordes of people descending on their designer shopping outlet. All very incongruous in what is otherwise an obscure market town. We passed by Swindon which I know of because of Billie Piper, Melinda Messenger and the Honda factory. There ends my knowledge of Swindon.

Spotify is a wonderful invention and hooked up to the stereo kept us supplied with driving classics from the likes of Deacon Blue, Meatloaf and the Verve.

Bristol is indeed a diverse mix of hills, zones, people and wealth. A city of many more than two halves. We'd booked a quirky eco-cabin, oddly situated in the grounds of a community centre and boxing club on a gritty estate. It was cosy inside but one of the French window panels had been smashed then boarded up, which seems unlikely to have been a previous guest. It's not easy to accidentally break a triple glazed panel unless Airbnb visitors regularly travel with sledgehammers.

We ambled towards Harbourside in the city centre, which was bustling in preparation for a music festival over the weekend. The centre of Bristol seems to be a dynamic mishmash of bars, eateries, colourful buildings, swanky apartments, quayside boardwalks, paddle boarders, scout troops and huts, Welsh people arriving to get lashed, old maritime paraphernalia with film crews, ethical supermarkets and marquees selling pick n mix. The nicest snatch of local life was this couple perched on deckchairs, drinking wine and cackling with laughter. The overall atmosphere was jovial but the police were loitering, ready to control the throngs. We feasted on cider, candy, chips and curry sauce, ice cream, crepes and cocktails. Even the first rain we've felt for a few months didn't dampen the mood.

Our Uber driver for the journey back was called Xamse, from Somaliland, living in Bristol for 20 years. When it transpired we'd even heard of it, it was like he'd waited two decades to discuss Somalian politics with passengers, such was the stream of consciousness. He was at pains to explain that the former British Somaliland region functions much better than what we know of as Somalia and that people from Somaliland have been travelling to and from the UK for decades, not just arriving as Somali refugees in the 1990s. I believe British Somaliland joined with the other Somalilands in the 1960s when they all became independent from their colonisers. If that hadn't happened, British Somaliland wouldn't have been as affected by the collapse of the Somalian nation in the early 1990s. And now it's kind of stuck, with a smaller population than Somalia, it will lack the political clout to decouple again.