GBP500m bid to double docks' size.

(From Western Daily Press)

Later this year Bristol Port Company - which runs the docks at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury - plans to submit an application for a new GBP500 million deep-water container ship terminal. RUPERT JANISCH went to see how the new bay would affect the operation If any one area encapsulates at once the past, present and future of Bristol, it is the vast expanse of dockyards at the mouth of the River Avon.

A handful of old buildings - mills and warehouses, remnants of the city's trading past - still stand tall among the modern crane towers and shipping bays.

Surrounding them lie storage spaces, home to millions of tonnes of goods and hardware waiting to be driven to shops and, eventually, homes and offices around the country.

And rising above them all, dominating the stretch of coastline and dividing land and sea, are three wind turbines which provide almost all of the power needed by the port.

As debate rages over the impact of aviation on global warming, it is easy to overlook the fact that 98 per cent of everything this country imports is brought in by sea.

Most of us might have little idea of what the port does, seeing little more evidence of its activity than the rows and rows of new cars which we pass when travelling up and down the M5.