After walking from the station up to the Clifton Suspension bridge we were starting to feel hungry. Crossing the bridge just took us into a wealthy looking leafy suburb with big houses and no sign of any cafes or shops. There was a mobile stall selling hot drinks and cakes, but we wanted something savoury.

As we retraced our steps to the Clifton side of the bridge, we took a little diversion up to the Camera Obscura. You had to pay to go in and we weren't interested in the camera obscura part, but you could pay separately to descend to the cave, so we did.

The stairs and tunnel were narrow and steep. You needed to hang on tightly to the handrail.I took this photo coming back up.



After several minutes of precarious descent, we reached the yellow balcony that juts out half way up the sheer cliff.



A sign warned that no more than 8 people should stand on it at once, but neither G nor I ventured out onto it as it felt very flimsy. I mean, I'm sure it is safe, but I have no head for heights.

After ascending the steep and narrow stairs and emerging into the bright sunshine, we discovered that the Camera Obscura had a cafe on the roof, but it was closed for the winter. We therefore made our way back into the shopping streets of Clifton to seek out a cafe. It took a while because there were fancy tea and cake shops (see above about wanting something more substantial) and there were cafes selling things like mushooms on artisinal hand-crafted sourdough toast for exorbitant prices. But eventually we found a Coffee #1, which seems to be a South Wales & West of England coffee shop chain. They had hot bacon baps, which were exactly what we needed after such a long walk in the cold.

Now sustained, we continued our walk back down to the docks and, as we had time, we popped into the Arnolfini art gallery where there was a very interesting exhibition of Grayson Perry's work. I would have liked to stay longer, but G is easily bored and after seeing a few things, we continued our way to the station and thence back to Cardiff and a M&S ready meal eaten in the apartment we were renting. It's nice to eat out, but also nice to be able to relax in the peace and quiet with reasonably good food and bottle of wine. :)

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