ast weekend was spent in Bristol. A weekend with a mate of mine who normally comes to the winter ATP festival. We’ve found over the last few years we’ve enjoyed ATP less, or more that the experience has changed. While travel to Mineheads Butlins is much easier and quicker for myself, it also means the whole weekend is to be spent in a place with all the atmosphere of a motorway services. The accommodation might be a bit better but the venues are also much, much bigger and the price has crept up and up too. We’ve probably spent more time on the last two visits drinking and catching up in Minehead and Dunster than we have watching the bands. Its kind of a shame as its a great line up this year. Anyway, we figured we’d just have a cheap weekend away, catch some music and have a few beers somewhere else… and thats just what we did.

We landed a decently priced room at the Radisson Blu Bristol via lowcostholidays.com* which turned out to be pretty nice. Great views of the city, friendly staff and a complimentary soft drink on arrival. Win all round. Only bad points were the two lifts for the whole hotel, one of which had a mind of its own and a lack of choice on the radio stations via the TV – I’ve noticed Travellodge are the same, I do miss my 6Music/BBC7 when I’m away sometimes.

The weather was, well…

Pretty wet for the most part, but we had a good walk round. Was sorry to see all the record shops gone from Park Street now and also to find out that the Bag o Nails pub is closed these days. But theres still loads going on there, we had hoped to catch Sid Griffins Coal Porters band who were due to play but unfortunately the gig got called off. I had a list of things still that looked worth seeing, one night we saw The Crowns, enjoyable though the venue was pretty empty which lost it some atpmosphere and led to a shortish set I think. In fact the whole town seemed a lot less busy than I remembered things.

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