Here's the delayed Bristol entry. Thanks to intermittent internet access I'm a day behind. Check back later for an entry about my wonderful day at Piet Oudolf's newest garden!

I always thought jet lag was one of those things that people exaggerated. My mistake. Yesterday was very long, very tiring, and very blurry to say the least. A lack of sleep on the flight is undoubtedly to blame. It’s not for a lack of trying, if anything it was more due to my aisle seat and the nagging worry that I would fall asleep leaning outwards and be swiftly decapitated. Death by dinner cart as they say. Whatever the reason, no sleep was had and once I arrived in London, and the euphoria of returning to the Underground had subsided, the ravages of jet lag began to set in in earnest. I nodded on and off during the subway ride, made an attempt to jolt myself with a pot of Earl Grey (my UK coffee replacement – it wouldn’t work at home, but here it does), and managed to get to Paddington Station in London and board my train for Bristol. The nodding continued for a couple of hours and then came the walk to the hostel. It would have been hard enough with the heavy pack, but it was made more difficult by my misfiring, sleep deprived brain that made navigation a real chore. Here’s a sampling of the jet-lagged logic that seemed to prevail yesterday.

Ben: I don’t think this is the right street.

Jet-Lagged Ben: I don’t care, we’re walking.

B: In the wrong direction.

JLB: But we’ve come so far!

B: In the wrong direction

JLB: The distance must count for something.

B: It doesn’t.

JLB: I’m not going back, I don’t want to look lost.

B: That’s sensible, and definitely don’t ask anyone.

JLB: Good thinking. How about this laneway?

B: It wouldn’t be my choice, but it would appear you’re calling the shots.

JLB: Hey a canal!

B: Can we sleep in it?

JLB: Hey the hostel!

B: Son of a bitch.

All the excitement aside, now I’m comfortably sitting in the lounge at the hostel (fantastically situated on Narrow Quay – a part of town that feels like a British Amsterdam) recalling what was a wonderful day.

The view from the hostel doorstep

I slept in until 8:30 after one of the deepest sleeps I can remember. After a shower and a change into some refreshingly clean clothes, I reacquainted myself with the English Breakfast. I made peace with myself by starting with the grapefruit appetizer, then set into the eggs, sausage, bacon, mushrooms, hash brown, beans and fried tomato. My heart dreads these trips to England. The outing of the day was to the University of Bristol’s Botanic Garden. It is fairly small by English standards, but quite wonderful and definitely worth the trek. From the welcome centre you are lead through a pollination garden that groups plants by their respective pollinators (including a possum-pollinated section), before passing a series of small rock gardens that simulate the unique habitats of the nearby Avon Gorge. Apparently the South-West of England is one of the last refuges for many rare wild British plants, which would must make these demonstration gardens wonderful ... earlier in the summer. One of the problem with using English plants in gardens is that there’s often very little to look at past the middle of summer. Spring can be a wonderful time, full of the quintessentially “English” plants like daffodils, primroses and forget-me-nots, but the summer, and especially the late summer is a very dull time as most of these plants have died back or, as some ephemeral plants do, have disappeared altogether. Such is the case of the English wild plant gardens. Luckily, the next garden, the Chinese medicinal plant is full of exotic novelties, ordered to reflect their medicinal use. You know you’re in a medicinal plant garden when a sign that reads “Resolve Phlegm” next to a plant doesn’t look out of place. After your phlegm is resolved, you move through what I think is the best part of the garden: the Evolutionary Dell. This small valley garden is arranged to represent the evolution of plants, from the first to colonize land to the spectacular diversity of flowering plants and trees that we know today. The garden begins with mosses and ferns to reflect the earliest non-flowering plants, transitioning to horsetails (now considered an invasive weed, but at one time could form gigantic trees), and some spectacular tree ferns. Combine the tree ferns with some monkey-puzzle trees and other tropical plants and it is a really special place. Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs. The garden finishes with the earliest flowering plants, represented by a pair of magnolia trees. Though obviously simplified, it is a wonderful representation of plant evolution and is a good example of how a botanic garden can be educational without being dull. The next gardens show off the plants associated with the Mediterranean climate zones of Europe, Northern Africa, California, Chile and Australia, which is followed by a garden laid out according to plant families as classified not by Linnaeus, but by DNA. It is often hard to comprehend how diverse plant families can be but this garden, again obviously simplified, makes it a bit more understandable. It’s fascinating to see how wildly divergent plants are related. You don’t necessarily associate barley with lilies, but in this garden they grow together. The path then leads through an edible garden with some of the biggest sunflowers I’ve ever seen, the New Zealand garden, and another series of gardens for pollinating insects. I ducked into the glasshouses for a peek and the spectacular Amazonian water lilies, lotuses, cotton plants, and towering papyrus made it worth the detour.

The Evolutionary Garden 

The glass houses

In all, I would hardly call the University of Bristol Botanic Gardens beautiful, but that’s not their purpose. Their mission is to “educate, communicate, and conserve” and that is reflected in the gardens. Any aesthetically dynamic plant combinations arise probably by accident, but that’s okay because the message of the gardens would be greatly diminished if beauty were allowed to rule the day. Botanical gardens are like living museums. Plants are arranged like artefacts in exhibits, according to a common theme that unites them all. Most museum exhibits are mundane to look at as a composition – glass boxes full of random assortments of stuff that was never meant to be displayed together – but their individual components are fantastically interesting and once you look closer you connect the dots and leave having learned something new. The problem with this model though is that you eventually reach a saturation point. There’s only so much you can take in. You can’t learn about every exhibit at a museum, I think it’s better to commit to looking closely and really learning a few than skimming through everything. The same is true for botanical gardens. So while I committed to learning and reading about some of the gardens, I also skimmed a few because, to put it bluntly, my brain was full.

So it was with a satisfied but full brain that I made my way back into the city centre. I grabbed some groceries and ate lunch at the hostel before going out for an afternoon stroll. I wandered first up to the monumental cathedral (every good city has a good cathedral and Bristol is no exception). 

Bristol Cathedral

I walked through some of the streets I had passed on the bus in the morning and spent a bit of time in the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (my brain was hungry again) before wandering back to the hostel.

Park Street

City Centre

When planning this trip I took a bit of a leap with Bristol. The safer choice would probably have been Bath, but I’d been to Bath, and I’d heard Bristol was a city worth seeing. Having spent some time here I can say it is definitely a place worth visiting. There are, in fact, cities worth seeing in the UK that aren’t London. Some of the other UK cities I visited during my exchange were either struggling with their new post-industrial identities, or so committed to their historical identities (i.e. York and Bath) that you couldn’t get a sense of the real, present character of a place. Bristol’s avoided that. It is architecturally dynamic with very old buildings mixing happily with very new ones, though there are some buildings from the recent past (looking at you 1970s and 1980s) that could be wiped away without protest from me. It feels young and vibrant, partly because of the university in the city centre, and partly because of its refreshingly grungy side that hasn’t been dulled by business associations or politicians concerned about what the tourists might think. If anything, the glam-grunge has become part of Bristol’s contemporary image, with street artists like Banksy making their name here. I like that, it makes the city feel human, accessible, and genuine. Those are issues that all cities all struggle to achieve, with varying degrees of success. I suggest looking to Bristol. I’d probably have had a nice time in Bath, but I’ve had a great time in Bristol and I’m glad I took the leap.

Bristol grunge meets Wallace and Gromit

As for tomorrow, it’s an early departure from Bristol to Bruton. Tomorrow I meet Piet Oudolf. Time to get some sleep.