A maritime window on the world

The ideal companion on a great escape from London to Bristol would have been Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He created Paddington Station, the Great Western railway that delivers you there and, as you discover when you reach this fine city, much more besides.

The Victorian Age had barely begun when Brunel brought Bristol and London closer. Today, you can cover the ground between them in just 100 minutes or so. And Brunel’s Bristol Temple Meads is one of Britain’s key transport terminals – today used by almost 10 million passengers a year.

Bristol has a strong independent streak, represented in superb artistic spaces such as the Arnolfini Gallery, occupying a former tea warehouse, and the sheer intensity of retail quirkiness – most notably in St Nicholas Market. Park Street, leading steeply from the centre up to Clifton, is also an appealing artery.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge is celebrating this year: it opened 150 years ago, some decades after such a link was first mooted – and funded – by a local businessman. Brunel’s brilliant and elegant design to connect the city of Bristol with north Somerset wasn’t completed until five years after his death. Besides the simple beauty of the bridge, two facts that intrigue me. First, it remains a toll bridge, costing £1 a time for cars but nothing for hikers or bikers. Second, the world’s original bungee jump was made here. You might think jumping off high structures connected by a rubber rope is as old as the Bristolian hills, but it happened as recently as 1979.

Bristol also has a strong claim to be Britain’s maritime window on the world. In 1497, John Cabot sailed from here in search of Asia, and instead claimed Newfoundland for the king. A few centuries later, Brunel revolutionised Atlantic crossings with the SS Great Britain, the westward extension of his London-Bristol railway. Travellers making a great escape to the New World in 1843 could take the world’s first ocean-going iron ship with a single propeller screw. Brunel’s design transformed the travel experience for the better. The ship reached a dismal end, being scuttled in the Falkland Islands, before a 1970s campaign brought her back to the city of her birth. She is now standing magnificently once more by the waterside, cunningly preserved against the elements.

Starting this summer, you can now go aloft – and experience what life was like when she first sailed in 1843. For a very reasonable extra £10 on the normal admission fee, you can clamber high up on to the rigging to near the top of the mast, and then inch along the yard-arm. You also get to see the city in all her glory, from the top of perhaps her greatest glory.