Fancy a day outside London seeing an underground railway and an underground vault on the same day?
If yes, then the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol is having a number of hard-hat tours of its recently discovered vaults, and by fortunate coincidence, two of the dates sync with tours of the nearby underground funicular railway.
The dates to book tickets for the Clifton suspension bridge tours are either Sunday 14th April at 12 noon, or Saturday 11th May at 10:30am.
On the same day, the nearby Clifton Rocks Railway will also be having open days, with tours every 10 minutes between 10am and 4pm.
You can’t book for those tours, just turn up and go inside, and the tours are shorter than the in-depth tour I went on a couple of years ago, but still worth doing.
Of course, if you can’t make the dates above, then the Clifton suspension bridge tours take place on several other dates through the summer months.
And of course, there’s plenty of other things to keep you busy in Bristol.
As a Bristolian (by adoption) I can heartily recommend both these visits to anyone with an interest in Victorian technology. The Clifton Suspension Bridge opening is much rarer than than that of the Cliff Railway and the vaults are genuinely jaw dropping. All the more so when you realise they were forgotten for many years and only rediscovered relatively recently.
And despite valiant efforts by enthusiasts to reopen the cliff railway and restore it, nothing has come of that, so take this opportunity to see all you can.
I went on both of these tours a couple of years ago with Subterranea Britannica and it was a day well spent. I even squeezed in a lunchtime visit to the Clifton Camera Obscura and Caves.
Plenty of other things such as the already mentioned Camera Obscura right by the suspension bridge, the Cathedral and College Green, the SS Great Britain and of course Concorde.
We’ve had a huge response from Ianvisits fans following the publication of this post and sadly all dates for the Hard Hat Tours at the Suspension Bridge in April and May are now fully booked.
We will shortly be releasing new dates for June and July. To get advance notice of these dates, please subscribe to our newesletter using the form on the front page of our website.
Thank you Ian for including us on your site!
Slightly buoyed by my time in Brizzle, I am chuffed that the general relaxed decency of the place has come through in the thanks from Laura Hilton above. Also I forgot to mention Banksy and the gurt big balloon fiesta whose mass lift-offs are impossible even though they happen right before your eyes.