Almondsbury Aquatics Centre is now open - get 25% off Aquatics Products until the 31st March 2011 www.almondsburyaquatics.co.uk
Monday Monday
I wasn't feeling terribly clever today so I took Stefan out to the Mall at Cribbs Causeway for some window shopping, Almondsbury Garden Centre and then Pets At Home, the latter two in order to buy some new fish for our little tank where we recently suffered some bereavements! But it ended in inglorious failure: we didn't see any fish we liked.
After tea, I went out for my usual evening bike ride.
I went all the way round the massive MOD Abbey Wood complex where many thousands of well paid accountants and pen pushers procure weapons and instruments of mass destruction. It really is a huge complex too with its own bars, gyms, cheap subsidised nursery. Abbey Wood has its own railway station too from which I saw a diesel hauled passenger train emerge, something I haven't seen for years following the demise of the diesel locomotive.
Evenings are starting to close in now. It's cooler and it's slightly damp and I can feel my asthma starting to kick in and worst of all it is getting darker, earlier. In two months, the insane British tradition of changing the clocks kicks in and we condemn ourselves to dark evenings as well as dark mornings. It's an exercise in masochism, utterly bonkers. 'Let's make ourselves miserable'.
...Parents outraged as The Bowl pub charges for parking|Bristol News ...
Welsh brewery Brains, which took over The Bowl Inn in Almondsbury last July, has installed ticket machines in its 38-bay car park opposite.
It now costs £1 to park for three hours, or £5 for the whole day. Signs in the car park on Church Road state that anyone who does not pay could be charged £50 by private traffic enforcement contractors. The move has angered parents at the nearby Almondsbury C of E Primary School in Sundays Hill, who have used the pub's private car park to drop off and pick up their children for more than 25 years under an informal agreement with the previous owners.
Many are now threatening to boycott the pub altogether.
The Bowl Inn's manager defended the charge, saying that parents using the car park forced out the pub's hotel guests, and that delivery vans had to stop in the road. Customers will get their parking fee back when they buy something from the bar or restaurant.
...News
Volunteers in Alveston celebrate a year of improvementsGloucestershire Gazette - May 11, 2010
replacing the access steps to the shops, and with the help of St Helen's School children planted 400 bulbs donated by Almondsbury Garden Centre.