I decided to spend the day exploring Bristol after arriving so late yesterday that I didn't get a chance to explore, plus I wanted to give the winds a chance to die down.
My warm showers hosts lived about 10kms east of the town and so I loaded up and set off and to my delight, after a couple of KMs I joined the old Bristol to Bath rail trail which is mainly downhill all the way to town!
The last 5kms yesterday I could sense something was wrong with my bike but was struggling to diagnose it. As I set off this morning it got worse and so I booked into a hostel in Bristol and went straight there and dropped off my panniers.
I did some sightseeing along the docks of the Avon river, saw the SS Great Britian that spent 23 years in the 1800's as the largest and fastest passenger steam ship in the world and 30,000 British emigrated to Australia on this ship.
Cycled through Ashton Court estate that now allows the public to use the extensive grounds as parklands with a deer reserve.
Then further up the hill to the Clifton suspension vehicular bridge designed by the same engineer as the SS great Britian. It was pretty breezy when riding over it.
Then up to the Observatory for bridge views.
I located a bike mechanic who was kind and knowledgeable and is located in the basement of a pub 😂.
Turns out it was the free hub body that connects to the cassette. Mine is a Shimano universal piece and he said he had one hub in stock in the whole shop but wasn't sure if it would fit. He checked and it was the right one, otherwise 2 days on order. He said that good touring bikes have universal parts that you could get in Africa or Nepal etc. phew! Glad this happened near a major town.
A bit more sightseeing and then back to the hostel for great chats with roomies and travellers in the kitchen 😊
On the road again tomorrow.
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