Bristol Harbourside Self-Guided Walking Tour

Welcome to Helen’s self-guided tour around Bristol Harbourside. I am a Chartered Geographer with 28 years’ experience of teaching secondary school students and leading fieldwork. I worked and lived in Bristol for many years and have been visiting the city regularly ever since. Bristol Harbourside is a vibrant part of the city, with a rich history to be found if you know where to look. I’m excited to be showing you around. We begin our tour at Millennium Square, a part of the city that is unrecognisable from how it was in the past. We’ll take a short detour to the cathedral and then continue back around the harbourside. We’ll see the ruins of the old castle, which was demolished under the orders of Oliver Cromwell and a bombed-out church, that now stands as a memorial to the city’s survivors of the Blitz. We’ll visit the old industrial heartland of the city and learn how these areas have reinvented themselves over the course of time, and discover secret tunnels. We’ll finish up at the SS Great Britain, a mighty steam ship built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Bristol today is a modern, multicultural city with a vibrant feel. Regular events take place, including the Harbour Festival and the Balloon Fiesta. The city is also known for its green credentials, having been named the UK’s second Gold Sustainable Food City, the first Cycling City, a Fairtrade City and finally having been a former European Green Capital. Throughout the tour, I’m going to give you some insider recommendations about the best places to visit, eat, and drink. The tour follows a linear route covering approximately 2.4 miles. At the end of the tour, there is the option to take a shorter route back to the start (just under a mile) or for a small fee, catch one of the harbour ferries that picks up at the end of the tour and will drop you back at the start. The land is flat and paved throughout, although there are still many cobbled parts of the city too. The tour should take between 2 and 2.5 hours to complete.