By Alice Lewis, Third year, English and Film
Summer 2026 was a scorcher, but autumn has arrived in Bristol. Storms greet the start of term. Parched grass absorbs rain like thirsty freshers guzzle buzz balls at an awkward Welcome Week pres. And as we trace our teary reflections in the window of our hall, flat or student house, it’s hard not to feel a sadness for summer’s end.
Our memories are caught up in empty glasses and bottles. We yearn wistfully for long summer evenings, drinking beer on the Downs, sipping Pimm’s in Channings or gulping something French by the harbour. Oh, cry me an Avon-sized river, Bristol students! Think yourselves lucky. You’re young, free, the clubs are open, and winter is coming in, so be like Virginia Woolf and embrace autumn, ‘the season of the soul.’
‘Mourning summer is not wrong; it’s just premature. You need the short, cold days to make the long, warm ones mean anything at all.’
Poet William Blake had this figured out long before Bristol students were made to take Science of Happiness units: ‘without contraries there is no progression.’
Why dread the transition into autumn and then winter? Is it the walking between germ-filled lecture halls in total darkness? Is it the grim inevitability of jean bottoms being ring-soaked by puddle water? Or is it the fear of public humiliation outside Senate House when losing a battle against a shape-shifting brolly and trying, and failing, to force it to become a mushroom again? These…paghh. Mere irritations only. Overcome such inconveniences by attending fewer lectures, wearing platform shoes, and acquiring a Malacca wood umbrella from Turnbull & Asser (other brands are available).
Some may say: ‘What about clubbing in winter? Who wants to play a personalised buckaroo with the many layers required to make getting there bearable in the first place? Who enjoys clinging to the aforementioned clothes all night or to their resentment at having to pay £2 to hang them up?’ I say: suck it up! Wear less. Feel a cold that makes you dance harder. Pay for an Uber, or the cloakroom. Enjoy the advantages of layering. How often do you get to wear so many different outfits in one night? It’s not the end.
Besides, Bristol’s autumnal attire possesses a visual drama that is absent in summer. As the leaves change colour, words like ‘russet’ and ‘vermillion’ come into their own. Conkers fall. Autumnal Bristol puts on a display that would send Rory Gilmore into an aesthetic frenzy. Bristol quite literally takes on a new light at night. The suspension bridge illuminates travellers to and from the city, and Park Street alike is lit up by festive fairy lights that reflect off the Harbourside’s glinting water. Forget seeing your own breath in the cold air, and it is hard not to be romantic over such a cityscape.
The red, orange and gold foliage of Woodland Road paints the picture of a New England College, exuding less of the incriminating intellectualism of Donna Tartt’s classics students in The Secret History (an honorary read to welcome the seasonal change). Alas, a rainy evening is a legitimate excuse to stay in and do nothing without guilt.
The cold creates a newfound appreciation for the warmth that you don’t get in summer. A flat white tastes better when you have earned it against the whistling wind on Park Street than when it’s just 25 degrees on your average weekday and nothing to walk in from. Bristol’s masses of independent cafes and kitchens know this, which is why the city’s winter comfort food economy kicks into gear the second the temperature drops. The Albion’s Sunday roast is not just food; it’s a reward system for having survived the walk there.
With shorter days come longer evenings, more intentional than ever. Plans start earlier, the night gets longer, and Bristol provides no shortage of things to do. Watch what happens to a beer garden crowd the moment it gets cold: if outside, everyone huddles under a heater clutching their pint before migrating indoors to a fireplace corner. For students, it seems the drinking never stops, even if the seasons do.
Sophia Scott
Autumn brings its own special pleasures, namely Halloween. For one night a year, people make more memories, and bad decisions, than an entire summer put together. Get dressed up and head out, go to the seasonal club nights, go to the socials, find your people. If this is your first one, the discomfort is not a sign that something is going wrong; it’s doing the same job as the cold outside of the pub: making whatever comes next, the first time you go back home, the first house that feels like yours land harder than it would have if everything had just stayed easy from September. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
None of this makes Bristol better than summer, but the seasons were never in competition with one another. A board game night under a blanket only means something because you know exactly what a Downs barbecue in May feels like and vice versa. Again, Blake had it right before Bristol students had beer gardens to lose, we cannot appreciate one without experiencing another. So no, it will not always be this cold, but that’s not a reason to wish it away. It’s the reason the warmth, when it returns, will feel like something at all.
Featured image: Epigram / Alice Lewis
Are you going to embrace the season of the soul?
