Bath

Breakfast was served at 8 in the dining room, on a table spread with beautiful crockery and every condiment known to humanity. We fell upon the fresh fruit salad like hungry wolves (vegetarian wolves, k?). After that came a plate of smoked salmon on scrambled eggs, and toast with French jam after that. I had another pot of tea all to myself; I have declared to the rest of the family that I'd like my Christmas present to be a two-cup teapot. Pip declared we'd each receive one gift agreed upon by the other three family members this year, you see.

After breakfast we packed our things ready to move to the gatehouse for our second night, as originally planned. We then set out to walk to the city centre, but went the wrong way. That meant that dad got a chance to see Bath's rowing club, though. Somewhat different to his home club! Once we realised we were in a different park to the one we thought was shown on the map, we chucked the idea in and caught the park-and-ride bus into town. The idea behind those is rather clever, actually: to save congestion in the middle of the city, there's a dirt-cheap bus service that runs from huge carparks on the outskirts of the city - commuters can park for the day and catch the bus to work instead of trying to park in town. I've seen this in quite a few English cities, now.

Anyway, we arrived in the centre, and set about trying to find a post office. We must've asked directions 4 or 5 times, but the building was incredibly elusive. Finally Pip and I saw "POST OFFICE" written in grand sandstone letters on a large building, but on closer inspection it turned out to have been turned into a department store. The girl behind the perfume counter laughed when we asked her where the "real" post office was, and with her directions we finally found it squashed into a little alleyway. Pip and I went and window-shopped while dad stood in the queue. Lots of dubious fashions on display - good for a gawk! Pip and mum were also very happy to see the streets Jane Austen wrote so much about. I'm in a little bit of disgrace here, though - I've not read any of Austen's books yet. I have the feeling Pip is going to force-feed me "Pride and Prejudice" when she's done rereading it.



Next stop was Pultney bridge, which has shops built out along either side. They're each only about 2 metres wide inside - there was a cafe, a florist, and a shop that sold tiny dolls-house furniture pieces (from almost any historical period you could ask for). We climbed down the stairs to river-level, to discover that the streets running along the river have a sort of arcade hidden beneath, flanked with columns. That's all in disrepair, now, though - I think it could be made into an attraction with shops and cafes if the local council (or whoever) were to fix the area up. It's only blocks away from the famous Abbey, which we went to walk around next.



We walked on, until we came to the Roman Baths. This is the site where the Romans discovered what they (and the locals before them) believed to be a sacred spring, and promptly built a temple and hot baths on the site. To tour the site is fascinating - Pip, mum and I all hired audioguide machines, which gave more information than most of the signs up around the place. The main hot bath was done up in the 19th century, when the Roman ruins on the site were unearthed - now it's got statues of Roman emperors lining the balconies above, and is a little over the top. Still, when you get down to the lower level, the original Roman pool remains pretty much intact - lead lining, original drainage system and all. The water's fairly scummy now (it leaves an orangey-red residue along the drainage ditches, and in the deep pool it's a tarnished green colour) - you can't bathe, but Pip and I dipped a finger in. It's as steamy as ever.





Nowadays you can see most of the rest of the Roman temple complex as well - it's below street level, so you just have to imagine it as it would have been when it was open to the air. There were some fascinating things on display, like the "curses" thrown into the sacred spring. These were a sort of "favour" asked of Minerva/Soulis, the goddess thought to be responsible for the spring - you scratched your request onto a thin sheet of lead or pewter, and threw it into the water. The translations are often very funny - someone asking help to find a lost glove, for instance. Lots and lots of people asking for thieves of their various belongings to be damned for all eternity, or to have their ears fall off. The funny part was the seriousness with which these requests for retribution were delivered, and over such petty things as a stolen cloak.

We three females spent a long time wandering around looking at all the displays - Roman mosaics, tools, luxury items, headstones... and at the remains of the baths. I'd read about the Romans inventing heated floors, but to see an original example in front of me was kinda cool. Hot air was blown around stacks of clay tiles holding up the paved floor, thus:



Finally we left, for poor dad's sake - he'd found the place interesting, but hadn't wanted to read every sign like we three had (whoops). The exit to the baths takes you out through the Pump Room, of Georgian novel fame - which is now a very pricey restaurant. The interior was sumptuous, but still managed to be elegant in a distant sort of way; that seems to go for most of Georgian upper-class fashion and architecture, from what I can see. I must admit it doesn't do awfully much for me... seems too far up itself.

The Pump Room's other, err, "attraction" is that since the baths' sacred spring was rediscovered in the mid-19th century, visitors have been able to sample the site's "healing waters". The room gets its name from the pump with pushes water through a highly-decorated fountain at one side of the room. A woman stands in front of it, filling glasses and offering them to visitors. According to my audioguide around the baths, the Duke of Wellington once described the taste of the water as being "like warm flat-iron"... I have to agree. It tastes so awful, it MUST be good for you!

We left the Pump Room, and wandered around the streets of inner Bath, which are without exception built of honeycomb-coloured sandstone. We stopped for lunch at a shop that sold pasties, and we ate those sitting outside, battling the savage pigeons for the crumbs. Next it was off to the Assembly Rooms, which are another mainstay of Jane Austen's books, mum tells me. The ballroom was what impressed me - huge, very high to allow room for the chandelier, and with crisp-white plaster mouldings across the ceiling. The walls were painted eggshell-blue. I tried to dance a waltz across the room with Pip, but she wouldn't be in it. Apparently in Austen's time the dance was thought very improper. Tee hee.



The Assembly Rooms also house the Fashion Museum, which Pip had been very keen to see - a collection of outfits and accessories dating from the modern day back to the mid-1600s. Dad was mildly interested, so he took a quick look through - but we all agreed that the three of us would ring him when we were done looking, and he could go to a pub in the meantime. So that made everyone happy! The exhibits were interesting, and a lot of fun - many of the pieces were displayed out of chronological order, so that comparisons could be drawn between each piece. Pip and I went through reading each sign, and picking out our favourites. I fell in love in with one dark blue riding habit from the 19th century with a zig-zag pattern around the hems, but Pip was more interested in the evening dresses. The cabinet showing a history of women's underwear was particularly interesting, and there were replica corsets and crinolines around the corner that you could try on over your clothes. I can't believe how uncomfortable some of this getup must have been...



Eventually we came to the end of the exhibits, and met dad out on the footpath with perfect timing - no phonecall needed. We headed back for Apsley house on foot, so as to see a few last sights of the city. The "Circus", for instance, which is a ring of terrace houses that represent some of the first town-planning in the country. After seeing York, Lincoln and Sheffield, I wasn't too surprised to learn that town-planning was a relatively new idea. Each of the buildings in the Circus has a frieze running above the doorway, and each frieze contains carvings of bizarre symbols (snakes eating their tails, crossed spades and spears, all sorts of plants in bouquets) that might be coats-of-arms, and might be completely arbitrary. I wish I knew which, but there were no explanations! Our other architectural stop was the Royal Crescent, another famous arc of terrace housing for the very, VERY rich. Again, Georgian design left me feeling cold. Everything about it seems so... repressed.



We reached the local supermarket as it was getting dark, bought soup for dinner, and toiled up the hill with fairly sore feet. We moved our things into Apsley House's gatehouse, which has been turned into a self-contained apartment. Not as plush as the 5-star rooms in the house itself, but every bit as comfortable. Lovely and warm, too. We had dinner once dad figured out for us how the stove worked, and then we slept.

Chester to Bath

We had a disorganised start this morning, because I had gotten my times for breakfast mixed up and made Pip and I late. Still, we wandered out to see Chester in daylight. There is a particularly garish clock set up in the town centre, and when I had stopped to photograph it the night before, a man had stopped me and said "if you like the view, go up on the city wall tomorrow morning - there's a man who sits up there and sells his drawings of Chester". Well, I doubted I would want to spend money on views of Chester, but I thought I ought to have a look after the random recommendation. We climbed the staircase to the level of the clock, and sure enough there was a man just beyond us, hanging up his prints on the fence.



When I went up and took a good look, there was a hilarious surprise - the artists drew views of Chester, alright, as well as the surrounding countryside, and various famous English landmarks. But he put a spin on each picture, by inserting Dr Who characters into each scene. The idea is tacky, I'll admit - but I am a huge fan of Dr Who, and the drawings were well-done, and it seemed kinda pop-arty. I struck up conversation with the artist (name of John), who grinned sheepishly and admitted that he'd "sorta made a living from Dr Who pictures". By this stage mum and Pip had joined me, and when he discovered we were Australians, he grinned again and asked us to hold on one moment. With a flourish he produced two pictures from his portfolio folder - the first one of Daleks at the Sydney Opera House, and the second of Cybermen climbing the Harbour Bridge. I was so taken by the first one that I bought a print. I love the weirdness of blending English pop culture with somewhere so close to home. Pip bought a view of the Chester clock, with Tom Baker and David Tennant raising their eyebrows at one another in front.

We strolled on, going further than we had the night before. We took a look at the site of the Roman amphitheatre (Chester's a Roman town originally) - it was interesting, but not very well-preserved. There's a road straight through the middle, for instance.

Back in the town, Pip bought herself a scarf at a little street stall. When we started retracing our steps so as to be off and driving again before midday, it suddenly became apparent that Pip had dropped the scarf somewhere behind us by accident. Argh! She and I rushed back towards town, with mum and dad following more slowly behind us.

Unfotunately we couldn't find the scarf - someone must have picked it up quite quickly. Pippo was upset, but dad took her back to the stall to buy another (happily it hadn't been an expensive thing to lose). Mum and I decided to wait at the point where we'd all caught up again, on the upper level of the shops. But something had been lost in translation in the rush, and after half an hour there was still no sign of dad or Pip. We had both the working phones, as well. Eventually mum and I began walking back to our B & B out of desperation; we were getting later and later, and we had wanted to be in Bath before dark. Happily the other two had come the same way, and were waiting for us on the bridge out of town. We bundled into the car, and finally drove out of Chester, into Shropshire.



Mum was excited to be driving through the area, because A. E. Houseman is one of her very favourite poets, and he wrote mostly about the area where he'd grown up ("A Shropshire Lad"). Unfortunately in the scramble she had ended up as the driver, and there was nowhere to pull over and swap. Yet another bungle on our part - we seemed cursed today. The final straw came when my blood sugar levels went belly-up and I started feeling carsick. We stopped at the first roadside pub we came to, in a place called Lembotswood, and I wobbled around the carpark until my stomach had settled. Judging by the historical photographs in "The Pound"'s loos, Lembotswood has remained exactly the same for the last hundred years - it's just gained cars. The pub's roof is thatched, complete with birds made of straw above each gable. We went in and had a drink each, and watched the tallest of the waiters expertly navigate the low ceilings. I thought one of them was going to knock himself senseless several times, but he'd mastered the quick duck under each roof beam, even when carrying drinks.



The last few miles into Bath, I swapped seats with dad. He can't see well in the dark, and someone had to help navigate by reading signs in the falling dusk. Well, the trip was fairly scary and horrible in the dark - we were following very good directions provided by our hosts for the night, but the roads into Bath are windy and narrow, and have no streetlighting. We descended the last steep hill into Bath, and inched around the edge of the hospital. Finally the sign for Apsley House came into view. We prised poor mum's hands off the steering wheel, and went inside to check in.

Here came the crowning mini-crisis of the day - mum had accidentally booked the wrong night, and our hosts were expecting us to be staying in the gatehouse the night after. Thankfully they soon figured out what had happened, and generously offered us rooms for the night in the main house, and at the cheaper rate - even though it really hadn't been their fault. Poor mum only asks a travel agent to help book flights, because she likes to organise car hire and accommodation herself. She had been juggling so many different things on our long and complicated itinerary that it was little wonder a changed date had slipped through the cracks. She was embarrassed, but I'm just impressed that she makes so many other things WORK, without making mistakes...

No harm done in the end, though, and a serendipitous result. The rooms we had been given for the night were sumptuous - mum and dad had a four-post bed, and Pip and I had an enormous suite of rooms to ourselves. This is probably the first and last time I'll ever stay in 5-star accommodation, and it was kinda fun. Pip and I made sure to sample all the exotic soaps and shampoos that were arrayed in our gigantic bathroom. She got the double bed, and I slept in a little side-chamber of my own. You should've seen the embroidery on the fabric of the curtains. Whee...



At the suggestion of our host, we went out for dinner at an Indian BYO restaurant not far down the hill, named "The Desh". I had chicken Biryani, but each of us shared our meals around the table. I'm afraid I got tipsy on wine, and we headed back for bed soon after we'd eaten. Good grief, those beds were comfortable!