TRISTAN CORK joins the Show of Strength Theatre Company for a Treasure Island Theatre Walk - one of the city’s best worst-kept secrets

TIMBERS are being shivered at the world famous Hole in the Wall pub, where the corner of Queen Square meets the Floating Harbour.

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Renamed the Spyglass, it's where young Jim Hawkins first encounters Long John Silver near the start of Treasure Island, and the spiritual epicentre of all things pirate.

And sure enough, even though this is 2025 and the events of Treasure Island - written by Robert Louis Stevenson in the 1880s about a time in the mid 1700s are almost 200 years ago, there's a pirate leaping around outside, with a group of people thoroughly entranced.

He's got a tricorn hat, a red pirate’s jacket and a parrot on his shoulder, and even though his real name is Gerard, this morning for a motley crew of curious locals, giggling children and wide-eyed tourists, he’s Captain Cuttlefish, and he’s presenting a very different side to Bristol.

We met a few minutes - and around 200 years earlier - by a barrel at The Centre end of King Street, a very historic little section of Bristol that’s usually missed by the young and happening Bristolians heading from the bus stop to the famous street of pubs.

There's almshouses here, and many centuries-old buildings, steeped in Bristol's former life, as a launchpad of adventure on the high seas, secret retirement home for the city’s real life pirates of the Caribbean, and city of promise and fortune.

Captain Cuttlefish got quickly into his stride, taking us back in time to the days of buccaneers and dou-