Bristol Audio Tours

Bristol's relationship with the sea and with civic pride is written into its geography. The Floating Harbour, created in 1809 when Isambard Kingdom Brunel's father Marc engineered a dam to hold the Avon at a constant level, turned the tidal mud problem into a working dock that remained the center of the city's maritime commerce for 150 years. Brunel himself went on to design the SS Great Britain here, the first ocean-going screw-propelled iron steamship, launched in 1843 and now restored in the dry dock where she was built at Great Western Dockyard. A walk along the harbourside today passes the M Shed museum, converted cranes, and a continuous procession of narrowboats and converted warehouse apartments.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge, another Brunel design completed posthumously in 1864, spans the Avon Gorge 245 feet above the river between Clifton on the Bristol side and Leigh Woods in Somerset.

The bridge is so specific to the city's identity that locals sometimes fail to notice it. Clifton village above the gorge, with its Georgian terraces and independent shops on Whiteladies Road, is the wealthiest quarter of the city, while Stokes Croft to the north is Banksy's canvas, a neighborhood of independent cafes and unsanctioned murals that the artist, whose identity remains officially unconfirmed, made internationally famous.