In suspense

Until today I'd never realised that the Clifton Suspension Bridge is not the one that spans the Severn between England and Wales. Now that I've been able to appreciate one of the country's most impressive architectural feats firsthand, this ignorance seems ludicrous.

We had a great time exploring the Clifton area of Bristol, which is another world away from the rest of the city. Near Bristol Zoo there is a row of the grandest mansions I've ever seen in the UK, built by merchants wealthy from the proceeds of trade, including in slaves. Clifton has so many interesting hills, streets, terraces, parks and stone stairways. A crescent of houses, converted into apartments, may be the longest in the UK. We took great delight in peering down into the basement courtyards and through huge windows taller than me.

Clifton stops short of winklepickers and unicycles, but it's very hipster and trendy. We ate brunch in the sun and ambled through the town where there is a plethora of bric-a-brac stores, antiques shops selling birdcages, independent artists, bijou cafés and as much quadruple roasted Guatemalan bean with soya milk as you could ever want.

We journeyed on to Oxford where Leigh was meeting up with her old friend Cath, for an onward holiday. Cath has a beautiful house in the suburbs of Oxford, and a four-month old Labrador retriever called Ted, which is the largest puppy I've ever seen; more the size of a baby hippo, with the jaws to match when they are scissoring around your head. He runs around the garden dislodging rocks and digging up ants' nests. He is extremely cute but unaware of his lumbering strength. We wined and dined and enjoyed the company of Cath and her husband Dave, but with one eye on the sleek golden ball of energy that would launch at you unawares, if you lost concentration for a second.