Great West Way® Travel Magazine | Issue 02

ave pioneer. You can visit one of his most remarkable
achievements, the SS Great Britain - the world’s first great
ocean liner - and get a feel for how the passengers from
steerage to first class experienced long voyages across the
Atlantic. Included with your ticket price is the new Being
Brunel exhibition, an immersive experience which takes
you inside the brain of the man himself.
If you have time, venture up to Clifton Suspension Bridge
- another of his projects that, sadly, he didn’t live to see
finished. The arts are alive in all their guises in this creative,
cutting-edge city. After dinner at one of Bristol’s many
independent restaurants, seek some of it out. Depending
on your tastes, you could catch some theatre at the Bristol
Old Vic - the oldest continuously open theatre in the
English-speaking world, even throughout its exciting recent
renovations. You could also enjoy live music, see stand-up
comedy or do something thoroughly subversive like go an
immersive dining experience in a mystery location. Local
go-tos for experimental entertainment include Old Market
Assembly and Tobacco Factory Theatres.
If you have time, venture a little off the Great West
Way to find Salisbury, a city that embraces everything
arts and culture. Visit Mompesson House, the 18thcentury
property featured in the all-star film version of
Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1995). There’s also
Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury Museum and Salisbury
Cathedral - or pop into the Old Sarum Airfield Museum
where you can sit in more aircraft cockpits than anywhere
else in the UK! And of course those sacred stones aren’t
too far away… If you’re heading north, don’t miss the
learned university city of Oxford. Of course, it’s not all
lounging around in the the Bodleian Library, pretending
to study. Discover some of the city’s more unexpected
attractions, like the Pitt Rivers Museum, full of alarming
anthropomorphic artefacts, or The Eagle and Child pub,
where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien used to meet and swap
stories. There’s also bikes, board game cafés and strange
sculptures to find - including a curious headless shark.
Did you know? Bristol has its own currency, the
Bristol Pound, which helps boost local businesses.
You can buy the colourful notes at the Tourist
Information Centre on the Harbourside...
Pictured top left
then clockwise:
UNESCO World
Heritage status,
Bath; The Mild
Mild West Mural
by graffiti artist
Banksy; Clifton
Suspension
Bridge; Bristol
Harbourside;
Brunel’s SS Great
Britain Mast; The
Oracle, Reading
Or that Reading is the UK’s largest town much thought of
as a defacto city? Soak up the energetic atmosphere at
The Oracle Shopping Centre, or visit the independent
and craft stores in the nearby streets or Harris Arcade
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