Tony Bullimore's favourite walk takes him alongside a strip of water that is woven into his own experience as a yachtsman and Britain's history as a maritime nation: the river Avon as it winds through its rocky gorge from the once-thriving port city of Bristol to the open sea.
Most of his boats have been built or refitted in Bristol and he's often sailed with the tide out of the Cumberland Basin and under the famous Clifton suspension bridge at the start of one of the eventful voyages - sometimes over-eventful - during his 30 years as a sailor.
There have been more times when, in between voyages, he's walked across Clifton Downs to the gorge to survey the same scene from the perspective of terra firma. This was his first UK walk following his rescue by the Australian navy after spending five days and nights on the upturned Exide Challenger in the Southern Ocean during the Vendee Globe round-the-word race three years ago.
"I walk to the bottom of our road, then down Claypits Lane and straight across the Downs for a couple of miles to the Sea Walls, just above the gorge," he says. "It's never crowded and, in the winter, it can be quite desolate.
"Once you get to the Sea Walls, there's a wire fence, but you can look down into the gorge and at the suspension bridge just sitting there, all stark and misty in the winter and in the summer all warm and crystal clear. It's really quite special.
"Walking is a little of everything for me: it's exercise and it gets you out into what I call the freedom zone, where you can think quite deeply about the things you're involved in - your life, your activities, your family. Or you can just let it all fade away and stare into oblivion. I go on my own, mainly, because I find it's a loner's job."
When he's skirted the gorge, he goes past Bristol zoo and takes a detour through the Downs, if there's time. The Downs have been used at various periods by thieves, prostitutes and rival Civil War armies, but the Victorians prettified it and now there's nothing more dangerous than a mobile café.
Sailing rather than walking remains his obsession, but he's scaled things down a bit. Training for his next voyage will be a run of three miles round the Downs each morning rather than six, and the voyages will be with a crew rather than the single-handed ventures that have seen him lose three boats. One forthcoming voyage is called the Great Race of the Century and should finally give him the circumnavigation of the globe, which he calls his "unfinished business".
The kingdom of Brunel
The Bristol Tourist Office's guide to suburban walks describes a two-hour route through Clifton covering some of Tony Bullimore's ground.
By the suspension bridge is a visitor centre that describes how the engineer Thomas Telford was asked in 1829 to judge a design competition. He rejected all the entries, submitted one of his own and declared it the winner. This was blocked by Bristolians, who substituted one with an Egyptian theme by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Riots and shortages of money delayed completion until 1864, after the great engineer had died. The bridge carries three million vehicles a year and has been notorious for suicides.
Brunel's other links with Bristol are Temple Meads, the terminus of his Great Western Railway from London, and his three great ships built in the docks - the Great Western, the Great Eastern and the SS Great Britain.
SS Great Britain was launched in 1843 and towed home in 1970 from the Falklands, where it was wrecked and spent 80 years as a coal bunker. It gets 100,000 visitors a year and a £7 million lottery application has been lodged to put the hull under a huge glass shield to halt its rusting.
"Everything in the Great Britain had been tried somewhere else, but their conjunction in one ship was quite remarkable," says Shane Casey, assistant curator. "It was 100ft longer than any previous ship, which was just mind-boggling, and during its life it retained that mystical quality, rather like Concorde. "
Other walking routes in the Tourist Office's booklets take you round sites of historical and maritime interest in the city. They include a Literary Trail, which passes the birthplace of Thomas Chatterton, and places connected with the Romantics Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.
Some long-distance paths also cross or touch the city: the Frome Valley Walkway from south Gloucestershire, for example, and the Monarch Way, which follows the southwards flight of Charles II from the Parliamentarians.
The Severn Way, which starts at that river's source and ends on the Bristol Channel, can be extended by walking up the Avon to Bristol and Bath, from where the towpath of the Kennet and Avon Canal can be followed to the River Thames and then London.
• The SS Great Britain costs £6.20 and includes interpretative displays in the Maritime Heritage Centre and a visit to the replica of the Matthew, the ship of 15th-century explorer John Cabot.
The practicals
For information on accomodation. walking and other attractions, contact Bristol Tourist Information Centre on 0117 926 0767 or www.visitbristol.co.uk/.
