Wills Hall dining room

We decided to go across to Bristol today, get a carvery lunch en route and then go to the university open day. We got there quite late, having been to a very windy outlook over the River Avon and the Clifton Suspension Bridge and eaten an ice cream in the wind. How very British! I haven’t included a photo as the river was at low tide and was a mass of mud with a trickle running through. (We had driven over the bridge into Bristol).

My husband is an alumni of Bristol (studied German and French in the 1970’s). We had last taken my son there when he was around 7 or 8 years old and he hardly remembered it. Going there on an open day was a good idea as we got to go into the dining hall and see all the portraits of past bursars of the university. My husband said he felt old as he had known two of them! It was an all male hall when my husband was there and had formal dining four times a week. Now it is unisex and has catering provided by a catering company, not by an in-hall chef! How times change. I think they thought my son was a prospective student as he looks very young for his age, but no one actually asked him! A couple of nice young ladies asked us if we knew where we were going and my husband enjoyed telling them about his time at Bristol. One of them almost wailed, “I don’t want to leave!” (She had finished her course there). My husband had loved his time there too.