...wear lots of warm stuff, especially in winter!
Hi everyone,
A new update for you all. We zoomed off for a little weekend in Bath, so here's an account of all the exciting things we got up to.
We sort of organised this trip at the last minute. After Glen hummed and harred about wanting to have a weekend off after a long and tiring ONE week of work, we finally decided that we'd go and beat the summer crowds to see all the amazing things Bath has to offer. So we jumped on the train at 5pm Friday and off we went. First of all let me tell you a bit about the country trains. You have to reserve a seat if you want to sit down. Of course when you book a seat, it DOES NOT automatically reserve one for you too. Oh, no, that is an extra function you have to perform. So, unbeknowns to us, all those people cutting in front of the train doors and then squeezing themselves through the gap the minute the doors retract, were dashing on board to secure one of the extreme minority 'unreserved' seats (of which there were about 15 by the way). So Glen was a little frustrated and I am sure his legs were having nightmares about having to stand for three hours. Lucky our train stopped at a gazillion stations on it's trek over to Bristol (the terminating stop after Bath), and we were able to dash into a seat within half an hour.
We arrived at a cute littte B and B called 'The Firs'. It was really just the quitessential country villiage manor (in my opinion - not that I am a conisseur of 'manors' by any stretch of the imagination, in fact I don't think I've ever been to a manor in my life, unless I count this one of course...). Here are a few pics:
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You can see the outside view of the B and B in the first picture. Pretty little gardens that, I imagine in summer, would be a bloom with lots of happy flowers. |
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This was our room. Cute little bow window seat that looked out onto the town and its extension about the nearby hill. |
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The country style kitchen, with a big table for guests to have breakfast at each morning. I loved this idea, it was so homey and cosy eating here. |
On both Saturday and Sunday we strolled into town through the local gardens. Below you can see Glen huffing out steam and then there's a frozen pond in the background. He was fascinated by this pond and made my heart falter when he put one foot on the ice 'testing it', and it gave a deep and almighty cracking sound. Eeeekk! I had visions of him falling in with the ducks!
Anyway, Bath. I was pleased to be able to see ‘The Royal Crescent’ and ‘The Circus’, regency buildings constructed in the shape of a crescent and circle respectively, and famous settings of a few BBC and Jane Austen dramas.
Bath's history dates back to the Roman empire, when, it was estrablished that the hot springs bubbling up from the ground would suffice as a great location for a huge complex including baths, hot and cold rooms, massage parlours, a temple and much more. I believe we're talking around 65 AD when this work was well underway. So when visiting the baths, it was amazing to see the ruins of columns, statues, frescoes, tools, jewellery (washed into the drains of the baths) and many other items, still relatively intact and surviving the centuries for us to look upon in awe thousands of lifetimes later. We spent about 3 hours walking through the centre with the audio guides up to our ears.
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| The biggest bath, steaming in the cool of winter. |
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| Check out the water quality. Originally the baths were covered in enormous cathedral style stone roofs, so the water was crystal clear. Now, exposed to the sun, the water develops algae. It's not treated water, so no bathing allowed. |
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| The very private King's Bath. Can you see the orange colourled tones on the wall. This is a previous water level. Obviously the Romans established the baths, but over the course of history, English royalty made changes and adaptations. So the water level you can see reflects the original Roman level, and the higher markings show later changes made when the pools were filled in to become more shallow. I thing it's amazing that archaeologists were able to dig back and uncover this bath in its somewaht original form, it blows me away. |
Jane Austen was an on-again off-again resident of Bath. In the 17th and 18th centuries when well off families would holiday in the town to be seen in the social circles and take a dip in the therapeutic waters of the baths. Although I have not read all of her novels, I did love ‘Persuasion’ which uses Bath for some settings. How times change when you think that Jane died before she got to see her name printed on her publications. In fact, her first novel was published as being written by 'a lady'. Times were different and though she wrote about the deepest love; both heart break and happiness, she never actually married herself, and died in her 40s. I really loved this Jane Austen Centre and even bought myself a heavy volume of all her works, how I will ever get that home I don't know.
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| The art of the fan; my best 'come hither' look. |
We pounded the pavement all over Bath and thoroughly enjoyed our time there. But that will probably be about it for our weekend sojourns for a little while, as we get ready to become tenants of a little one bedroom flat this Friday. Yay! I guess the next photos I post will be of our new place. (Oh and possibly a little car that one of the teachers at Glen’s work mentioned she’d be happy to give to us if we wanted it, working ok, but one door doesn’t open, it needs a little fix-up, yet it’s registered to mid-year. This could be a good little gain, we’ll see how it goes).
XXOO
Stacey
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| Glen in front of the ever-so-cute Pultney Bridge. |
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