For the best part of 40 years, there has been a standing joke in Bristol: when your family comes to stay, or an old friend turns up, or indeed anybody who doesn’t know Bristol very well arrives on your doorstep, you take them to the terrace of the White Lion.
It is almost compulsory.
The other Bristol joke, of course, is that once you get there it is virtually impossible to get a drink. I have avoided the place for precisely this reason on more than one occasion. Why stand in a queue for half your afternoon when there are perfectly good pubs everywhere else?
But I went last week, and rather pleasingly, things have changed.
The White Lion is part of the Avon Gorge Hotel, itself part of the Hotel du Vin family, and the whole thing feels considerably more grown-up than I remember it. The terrace is no longer populated by those slightly grotty wooden picnic tables that looked as though they had been rescued from a school fete. They’ve been replaced with smart, sturdy metal tables and chairs, there is a proper bar on the terrace itself and, most importantly, there is no need to remortgage your house while waiting for somebody to serve you.
There’s even a 6 O’Clock Gin Garden, which sounds like exactly the sort of thing that somebody at Hotel du Vin would invent after a particularly productive meeting.
And the bar on the terrace is a genuinely good idea. You can get your drinks there, or wander inside to the main bar if you prefer. Either way, the great Bristol tradition of taking your guests somewhere with an extraordinary view without actually being able to get them a drink appears, thankfully, to be over.
And then there is the view.
This, mercifully, hasn’t changed at all.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge hangs above the Avon Gorge like Brunel’s greatest piece of showing off, and from the terrace you get the whole extraordinary thing laid out beneath you. When the sun is shining, I honestly can’t think of a better place to be in Bristol. You could have a miserable week, hate your job, discover that your mortgage has somehow doubled and still, for a few minutes, feel that everything is probably going to be alright.
For my full house on the Bristol visit, I had a pint of Thatchers cider. It was gurt lush, as we say round here.
So, after nearly 40 years of taking people here because you’re obliged to, I can finally recommend coming here because you actually want to.
And if somebody from out of town is staying with you, obviously, you still have to bring them.
Some things are sacred.
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