Prison, ballooning in Bristol zoo.

The usual story of not having enough time to update my web blog. Apologies to everyone.

I've been back to Oxford recently and went out on the town with Emily, Deirdre and Allen. So much has changed in the city since I was there as a student. Well I guess it has been around sixteen years since I studied there!

One of the biggest changes is the castle that is next to the Westgate shopping centre. I don't remember ever going there as a student but the place has been recently converted into an area of restaurants, theatres and apartments.

We went to have dinner there at Carluccio's which was very pleasant. At the start of our meal a play started in the square. Here you can see one of the cast members on the balcony speaking down to the audience. This was only the start of the play and it then moved on to somewhere else.

After dinner we went to some of the old pubs that I used to frequent as a student. Once of the places was The Gloucester Arms. It's a bikers/metalers pub, which was always full of smoke and smelly bikers. Unfortunately because of the recent smoking ban the place only really smells of bad BO from the bikers! Deirdre tends to drink white wine when we go out. When I got to the bar I had to ask them for a wine list, knowing that they wouldn't have one. I got a laugh from the barmaid, and a reply that they didn't even serve wine let alone have a wine list.

A few weeks ago the Bristol balloon festival was on at Aston Court. My sister Helen came down to visit me over the weekend with my two nieces Aimee and Elise as well as my brother in-law Aran.

At the Balloon Festival there were other things shown as well as lots of hot air balloons. Here you can see the local TA showing off their big guns and how to do an assault on a bunker position.

There was also a pony and carriage display team called Chariots of Fire which both Aimee and Elise were very impressed with, as well as a motorbike stunt team.

Here's one of the very odd shaped hot air balloons, which was shaped as an Action Man. It looked very cool, but we didn't see it take off. They just inflated it and then eventually deflated it again. Maybe it was meant to help out in the TA training.

There was a very big fairground at the festival with lots of rides and the usual stalls as well. One of the smaller rides was this bungie-jumping ride for kids. Both Aimee and Elise had a go but it wasn't very cheap. At ten pounds a kid for only five to ten minutes jumping time they must have been raking in the money. There were four kids bouncing at a time and at that rate I think I should start one of these myself and make some money on the side.

Unfortunately we totally missed the evening ascent of the balloons. We decided to be more environmentally friendly and caught the bus to Aston Court. The bus back ran every hour at half past the hour. The ascent was scheduled to take place around six pm, but by seven they still hadn't taken off or even inflated.

We could see all the balloons laying flat on the field but none of them were inflating. We had to catch the 7.30 bus to get the kids back home in time, just as we were getting on the bus we could make out some of the balloons going up, so we only just missed it.

Here are a few of them just passing the Clifton suspension bridge. It must have made a great sight to see them all rising.

The following day we all went to Bristol Zoo. It's the same zoo that Johnny Morris used to film from for all the kids TV programs that he used to make. I have very fond memories of his TV show and his voices he did for the animals.

One of the more impressive animals at the zoo was the silver backed gorillas. Here you can see the dominant male during feeding time. Helen said that he really did look like a large man in a suit. It's amazing how human they behaved.

He must have been a lucky gorilla as he had two females to keep him company and one of them had recently given birth to a baby. The baby gorilla was especially cute and was also very shy. He rarely strayed very far from his mum and spent most of the time hanging on to her arm.

While we were having a picnic lunch at the zoo there was a floorshow on for people to see and meet some of the smaller animals. She demonstrated some ferrets, mice and also a python snake.

At one point they wanted some child volunteers for the show. We were about to ask if Aimee wanted to go up there when we noticed that her face was covered in juice from eating red cherries. Maybe she shouldn't go up there while looking in such a state! Obviously she didn't have a clue that her mouth was covered in cherry juice, but she did look very funny.

The python snake that they had on display was particularly impressive as well. You could get very close up to it and I did. Unfortunately they didn't want you to touch it just in case you caught something of its skin.

They also had an example of the skin that a larger python would have, which was taken from an illegal poacher. I think the kids were more impressed with the snake skin than the real snake, maybe they were thinking what a great new belt or bag it would make!

Here's a picture of my nieces though a glass bubble. You could crawl under a display of locusts to see them from the other side in more detail. Most of the locusts were giving each other a piggyback for some strange reason according to Aimee and Elise!

After the zoo we went for some great food at a tapas bar beside the Bristol docks. As you can see both Elise and I enjoyed some really great banoffee pie deserts. It was a surprisingly large desert and we both felt quite sickly after trying our best to eat as much of it as we could.