Free Weekend? Explore Bristol – a beginner’s guide

We’re standing by an empty building next to the derelict, Grade II-listed Carriage Works on Stokes Croft, the street known as Bristol’s creative epicentre. Alongside the hipster coffee bars, graffiti is everywhere, as you might expect from the original stomping ground of Banksy: “sell skin for soup”, says one slogan; “choking on your fumes” is another; and, most effectively, “think local boycott Tesco”, a vast work created as part of a campaign against the predatory chain opening on nearby Cheltenham Road, which ended in rioting in 2011 (the store opened anyway, of course).

It’s a fascinating part of the city, underlining its diversity within a relatively small geographical area. Just fifteen minutes walk from Stokes Croft – a sort of jumble of Dalston, Berlin and Camden Town – is the upscale Harbourside area, with its mammoth bars, galleries and glass restaurants; uphill is swanky Clifton, like Hampstead, if the Heath dropped away down to the Thames immediately below.

The talk in Bristol, as in many British urban centres, is one of regeneration and improvement. Its impressive grandeur dates back to its role as the second most important port in the UK after London. But in the Second World War the city was badly bombed and had a harder time reinventing itself. Now, of course, it just can’t stop. And it’s hard to argue with a reinvented space as beautiful as, say, Queen’s Square in the town’s Old City district, just near the train station: once traffic-clogged and decaying, it’s now a bucolic Georgian park.

Start there and walk up Park Street, with its sweep of Georgian buildings, to Clifton Suspension Bridge, the city’s iconic landmark designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Strolling through Clifton village – with its secluded squares, and independent shops – it’s easy to forget it was built with profits from the tobacco and slave trades.

But the bridge, which spans the Avon Gorge, and was completed in 1864 (five years after Brunel’s death), is something else: 245 ft above high tide, 1453 ft wide, it’s awe-inspiring, the Samaritans signs dotted about quite humbling too.

Suicides are, apparently, much reduced these days since barriers were erected in the late 1990s, but in 1885, a 22-year-old woman named Sarah Ann Henley survived a fall from when her billowing skirts acted as a parachute; she subsequently lived into her eighties. (This was a story my granny, who lived in Clifton for years, told me many times).

Back down in the city centre, we stayed at the Hotel Du Vin, a former sugar refinery whose sense of history fills its restored 17th century warehouses, when the river once came right up to it. In keeping with such heritage, the dining room is candle-lit and panelled, the bedrooms atmospheric. Nearby are the the medieval Christmas Steps, highly recommended themselves for their independent outlets, including a stamp-collectors and the Bristol Cider Shop.

A five minute stroll from the hotel is St Nicholas market, a sort of mini Spitalfields with an indoor section, all vintage clothes and jewellery, and better still the dozens of tempting streetfood stalls under the vaulted roof. We clocked Stokes Croft hipster bar Pie Minister, the Bristol Sausage Shop and counters overflowing with olives, Portuguese snacks and sizzling Jamaican jerk chicken. We also liked the look of Source, a deli and diner on the edge of the market.

Hungry now? Head to the next page – our beginner’s guide to eating & drinking in the city over one weekend