Great Western Coffee Shop

This is, I'll admit, a bit of a tricky one. Maybe it would have helped if I'd taken it in the winter, when the greenery was a little less excitable. But stick with me, have a guess, and when this is all over I'll show you the view my Dad took from the very same spot in 1959...

(https://fosbr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/before_20210710.jpg)

Hmmm. Nobody else has had a stab. I think we are going to need some more clues for this one.

I'm assuming that it is somewhere not too far from Bristol and that it is either looking down on a disused railway line or was taken from one, but beyond that I have no idea.

1959 might be a clue !..I'm going to have a guess at St Ann's....

I looks to me more like a disused car park - but I suspect it was a disused something else before becoming a used car park.

Way out, but I wondered if it's part of the Wilts and Berks canal. It sort of looks wet.

Lots of good stuff here:

stuving's observation that it has been used as a car park is spot on, and should help get people on the right, er, track.

Western Pathfinder is on the right side of Bristol, but the wrong line.

froome: You're really going to like my Dad's photo when I put it up! Yes, I'm looking down from a hump-backed road bridge to a disused railway.

eightf48544: Sorry, no!

Which starts to sorta-suggest to me that you were on the way out to (or beyond) Whitchurch - headed for Pensford?

You mean, like Talbot Road, Brislington?

Brislington Station.

stuving has it:

(https://fosbr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/talbot-road-1959.jpg)
Image (c) D G Weekes

This must have been one of the last passenger trains from Bristol to Frome via the North Somerset. We're stood on Talbot Road bridge, looking away from Brislington Station towards the iron bridge of the A4 Bath Road. The junction in the foreground shows we're pretty close to Brislington Station, which was just the other side of Talbot Road.

When you mentioned a hump back bridge, I was going to suggest Talbot Road, but as you had said that it wasn't the line through St Anne's, I assumed that must be wrong, as I think of that line as the one which went through the St Anne's park area of Bristol.

The long car park along the line of this railway is owned by a religious group, who really don't want anyone to have access to their land for any sort of future transport projects, whether that is road, rail or cycleway. Or at least that was the situation some years ago.

St Anne's Park station (https://fosbr.org.uk/st-annes-park-station/) was on the main line from Bristol to Bath, about 1.6km north of this location.

The car park was used by the Exclusive Brethren, a branch of the Plymouth Brethren. Their premises were redeveloped for housing as Lynwood Park, about 10 years ago. The car park has been disused since then.

Thanks. I've obviously been out of the picture regarding Bristol infrastructure development for longer than I thought!

I remember when there often allotments on bits of spare land on the railway side of the fence, like the ones on the top of the embankment in the older picture.  I don't see them nowadays - perhaps they're thought too dangerous now there's no longer a war on.

I think there are allotments, or at least an allotment, on the railway embankment at Redland, west of the station, on the Severn Beach line.

I've always had a fascination for railway embankment allotments, and it is good to see at least a few (probably very few) still clinging on.

I don't know if these were official back when the photo was taken, but I've kind of assumed the one in Redland (which is more of a garden I think than an allotment) is merely tolerated, as were those at Montpellier, rather than officially allowed.

The Redland one always looked just like any other allotment for the years I lived in Bristol (I was there for 35 years up to 2006, but can't remember now when I first travelled on the line). It often looked very productive, and I'm pretty sure it will have been officially sanctioned. The Montpelier ones, I think, are more recent, though there is a small allotment site hidden away just above the railway tunnel there. I had allotments for many years on the vast Ashley Hill site that overlooks the main line and its junction with the Severn Beach line.

I think we were probably talking of slightly different sites. I was thinking of something just off Kensington Road, which looks like an extension of a garden, but looking at Google earth shows a series of more allotment-looking allotments further west, behind Melville Road.