Bristol UK Aerial Photographs and Tourist Attractions

Aerial photographs and tourist attractions of Bristol, England, (Great Britain) United Kingdom taken on 5 August 2011. (Front Cover view of the Floating Harbour, Bristol City Centre looking in a south-easterly direction.)

Tourist Attractions
Ashton Court Estate Country Park and Mansion (850 acres of woodland and grassland offers ballooning, the International Bristol Balloon Fiesta, International Kite Festival, deer park, golf courses, horse riding, market, miniature railway, mountain biking, orienteering and 5 kilometre runs around the estate)

Avon Gorge (rises about 100 metres above the tidal River Avon is a Site of Special Scientific Interest [SSSI] part of which is a National Nature Reserve. Natural cliffs and quarry exposures showing complete local succession of Carboniferous limestone make it a historic geological site with rock screes, scrub, pockets of grassland and adjacent woodland supporting an exceptional number of nationally rare and scarce plant species. The ground-cover flora is extremely diverse. Unique to the Gorge are Bristol Rock-cress Arabis stricta and two Whitebeams: Sorbus bristoliensis and S. wilmottiana. )

Bristol Cathedral has most likely been located at its site for over a thousand years and is a major example of a hall church in the UK. It originated in the Augustine Abbey dedicated to St Augustine the Great and founded in 1140 by Robert FitzHarding, a wealthy merchant, Provost of Bristol and Lord of Berkeley. The Chapter House is Norman and the Choir Medieval with many interesting carvings. [page 3]
Cabot Tower on the parkland of Brandon Hill is a 105ft tower built in 1897 to commemorate John Cabot's famous voyage four hundred years earlier)

Outdoor Amphitheatre on the Harbourside hosts the annual Bristol Festival for a wide range of talent, cuisine and exhibitions and is popular for skateboarders and BMX riders.

Peros Bridge, (a footbridge named after Pero Jones [approx.1753 – 1798] the slave of John Pinney [1740-1818,] plantation owner on the Caribbean island of Nevis and sugar merchant based in Bristol after 1784. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was of crucial importance both economically and socially to Bristol)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Victorian engineering masterpieces:
The SS Great Britain (on display in the original Great Western Dockyard where she was first built and launched in 1843 as the largest ship in the world which was also the first screw-propelled, ocean-going, iron-hulled steam ship)

The Clifton Suspension Bridge (originally designed by Brunel but sadly abandoned due to a lack of funds and not completed until 1864, after his death)

The Great Western Railway (GWR) (of which Brunel was Chief Engineer at 27 years of age and Bristol Temple Meads Station) and
St. Mary’s Redcliffe Church (described as the fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England by Queen Elizabeth 1st)

The Floating Harbour (designed in 1802 by William Jessop a famous civil engineer, it opened in 1809 as a non-tidal harbour and help secure for two centuries Bristol’s growth as a commercial port. Closed in 1975 it was then regenerated for leisure, commerce and residences)

The Matthew (a replica of the wooden caravel ship that John Cabot sailed in from Bristol when he landed in Newfoundland, North America in 1497) Although some authorities regard Cabot’s landing as discovering North America, there is clear evidence that the Vikings had much earlier landed in Labrador.

The Wills Memorial Tower of Bristol University (Commissioned in 1912 by George Alfred Wills and Henry Herbert Wills, of the Bristol tobacco company, W. D. and H. O. Wills. The building is a memorial to their father, Henry Overton Wills III, who was the first Chancellor of Bristol University. At 215 feet it was designed by George Herbert Oatley, constructed from Bath and Clipsham stone and opened by King George V in 1925.)