Mountain Rescue at Avon Gorge

Thursday Lunchtime in Clifton. A fire engine nonchalantly parked across the Clifton approach to the Suspension Bridge stops anyone from getting through.


A couple of cyclists are experiencing what it is like to cross the bridge without someone important in a Mercedes driving 6" behind them.


 
Why the closure? looks like the fire brigade are rescuing someone off the Avon Gorge, just to the side of Giant's Cave Buttress (you can see the ropes over the lighter limestone)
 
The climber seems be being evacuated from the bottom of the climb.
We hope all is well.

(PS: for anyone thinking of using these photos, this particular are released under the CC 'with attribution' license, meaning the site "Bristol Traffic" and URL http://bristolcars.blogspot.com should be used. To publish without crediting us is a copyright issue)

Gloucester Road #3

Update #1: Nail Creations Salon, next to the Thai place.

Update #2: we have a link to a video.

The commentary is perfect given the circumstances. For those concerned about them Franco and colleagues are OK. At least they were at 12:00; if they stayed in the Blue Lagoon all afternoon, they may be a bit worse for wear by now. There was someone walking in the road asking if they knew a good hairdressers. "Well, there used be Francos", was the response. We'll have to see what state it's in later. Hopefully it'll be OK.

Gloucester Road #2: an eerie calm over the A38

Normally this road on a Saturday is pretty chaotic: through traffic, shoppers trying to park outside their shops, either in the designated areas, or in the bus stops, the buses trying to get through, pedestrians trying to get across without walking 200m to the lights and back again; then there are the cyclists.

Today: silence.

Police to keep things calm, close the road and keep people on foot out the way.

One conclusion you can draw from the emptiness of the parking area is that the area really is only used by shoppers and shop staff. Today there's just a Paul Roberts car and a fireman -who does walk around with helmet and hi-viz clothes with identification details, the way we think everyone should dress.

There's also a command unit with a CCTV camera to the top and a satellite uplink pointing towards something in geostationary orbit above Africa.

The odd thing is everyone assumes at first that the troubles have come up from Stokes Croft -an eviction, another bank wrecked. But not today. It's worth visiting though, just see what Gloucester Road is really like when closed to traffic.

Gloucester Road Incident #1

Some breaking news here: Gloucester Road is closed on account of the Thai Nail Bar Corrections Nail Studio near the co-op and just round from Franco's Hairdresser's blew up at 10:00 today; Gloucester Road is closed.

1. The good news: no serious injuries.

2. People are free to re-use these photos with accreditation, though they would be better off contacting Franco and team -last seen outside the Blue Lagoon having early beers, as they have better photos, on account of being at work three doors away at the time. No haircuts are on offer today.

Gloucester Road is closed off even to foot traffic from the Breadstore to the Hobgoblin pub.

You can just make out on the pavement some burned out bits of shop.

Apparently they have chemicals on site; the owner was upstairs.

The road is closed to cars from Zetland Road; people are being directed to Elton Road or right onto Cheltenham Road and Cromwell Road.

There was some concern by outsiders looking to get to the cricket match that they didn't know where to go. Turn onto Cromwell Road, head up to the first left-turn that isn't no entry, head along that road all the way and you end up at the cricket ground. For us locals, that's faster than the A38 anyway.

Wishing anyone injured a fast recovery.

Update: Allotmentqueen says: "Creations Nail Studio, actually, next door to Simply Thai. But then, as a van driver, I don't expect you get your nails done that often. "

logistical problems part 2

Round the corner from where we saw a car ticketed for being on the pavement, I was hoping to see some more tickets along Kingsdown Parade, whose pavement on one side has effectively been lost to cars. No, no tickets.

But what's that on the fiesta X241YCD? A leaflet? From the fire brigade?

It says "Protecting our community. In streets like these, thoughtless parking can prevent fire engines getting through"

Along this stretch of road. This is is the only car with such a leaflet. Interestingly, it is the only car parked with all wheels on the road, rather than the pavement. It is not on a keep clear sign, or double yellow lines. It is the only vehicle legally parked on that side of the road, for the entire length of the road. And because of that, it is the one to earn the telling off from the emergency services for thoughtless parking.

Some people think this web site is some kind of satirical site. It is not. It is a documentary. We cannot make things like this up. Here we have Kingsdown on a Friday evening, the only car to get a ticket for pavement parking did so because it made it hard for cars to get past; the only car to get a note telling it that it was parked "thoughtlessly" was the one parked legally.

Someone in this city is playing a bigger game of irony than anything we can put together. That or they don't have a clue what they are doing.

Emergency Services

Casualty were out filming near the railway path today; some fictional incident involving firemen, police and, obviously ambulances

Having seen a real RTA outside our house at the weekend, I can point out some fundamental differences. The key one being that in fiction the police actually turn up.

Whereas in reality, when the (alleged) drunk driver tries to do a runner, its up to us bystanders to grab him, and, when they turn up, for the firemen to hang around until the police have a spare vehicle. Which, on a busy weekend evening, appears to take some time