Bristol trip
On a Bristol trip, you’ll be visiting a city that has been out-shined by Britain’s other major cities for a long time, however the fortunes of this old industrial city have changed over the past couple of years and there’s a new sense of swagger and confidence.
Let’s take a look at some of the various sights that the regenerated Bristol has to offer its visitors, starting with the SS Great Britain.
Brunel designed this massive steamship in 1843, the first transatlantic steamship to be driven by a screw propeller in fact. The design was of great success considering that the ship served as a luxury ocean liner and cargo vessel for forty-three years. The ship had some downs after that period, being used as a troopship and coal hulk and then it was abandoned near Port Stanley in the Falklands because by 1937 it wasn’t watertight anymore.
However it was towed back to Bristol in 1970 and a thirty-year restoration program resurrected the SS Great Britain to its heyday looks, with incredible detail and attention having been put in refurbishing everything in the ship.
One other attraction that you shouldn’t miss is the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum, it’s a great window to Bristol’s slave-trading past, and shows the history and consequences of British colonial conquests. The museum has sixteen galleries and they exhibit over five hundred years of British trade, exploration and exploitation.
A couple highlights include sepia-toned films from the heyday of the Empire and a collection of outfits worn by colonial administrators and others.
Another Brunel masterpiece is the Clifton suspension bridge, a 76meter-high creation that spans the Avon Gorge from Clifton over to Leigh Woods in northern Somerset. The bridge was designed to mainly deal with horse-drawn traffic and foot passengers, but nowadays it deals with over twelve thousand cars crossing it each day.
There are of course many other attractions to see in Bristol, so make sure to employ our Bristol car rental services in order to see as many of them as possible.
