England Day 4: We ordered breakfast for 830am so we could
have an early start on our only day in Bath.
Sue was running a little behind so by time we ate and left it was closer
to 930. We headed directly to the Abbey
but it was closed to prepare for a graduation.
The staff said it would be open after 5pm.
While we stood there sipping on the
stinky water, husband started chatting with a reporter who was there for a
story and nephew was probably bored and confused when I got tears in my eyes
when the orchestra started to play. Jane
Austen had been here along with so many others.
And now I was sipping on the same stinky water that brought them all to
Bath. Priceless. We walked around to get
a better view of the King’s Bath then made our way to the meeting point for the
Tour.
There were some 80 people gathered for
the Tour but the guides broke us into four manageable groups. Our guide was an energetic retired educator. She started us off imagining the swamp that
was there before even the Romans. She
explained how there have been four houses of worship on the site over the
ages. After the grand introduction, we
were off for 2.5 hours of walking all around Bath. We saw what is left of the original wall
which was very cool and something we might not have noticed on our own.
She told us about the three men that
made Bath what it is: Allen, Wood Elder (and Younger), and Nash, and weaved their
stories throughout the tour. She talked
about the 4 Kings named George after
whom the “Georgian Period” is named. We
all felt a little sorry for Frederick who his parents disliked so much they
allowed him to be a guinea pig for untested vaccines (harsh). No-one seemed to mourn his death. As she explained, had he ascended to the
throne, the Georgian era would have been interrupted.
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| These houses show the different ways of quarrying the Bath stone |
The tour took us past the Assembly
Rooms, to the Circus and the Royal Crescent.
We saw the hole in the brick fences where the human waste was collected
by enterprising men to sell to farmers as fertilizer. We walked the path where Captain Wentworth
and Anne Elliot reaffirmed their love in Persuasion. She showed us how home owners would brick up
or reduce the size of their windows to pay less in taxes. We ended up by the Abbey and she departed
rather quickly—no tips, no further chatting.
It was a fantastic tour!
Next stop was #1 Royal
Crescent. I really wanted to see the
Assembly Rooms but we were running out of time so I chose #1. We were a little confused by how to tour the
place until husband noticed that we had entered #1 A (for annex) and that the
entrance to #1 was next door. We went up
and down the elevators and stairs a couple of times before figuring this out… We watched the video then went next door.
Since we were at the Royal Crescent,
I suggested we stop at the Royal Crescent Hotel for a drink. This was a really nice break. The hotel gardens are gorgeous, the public
rooms beautiful and quite similar in décor to #1. The drink prices were not even extortionate.
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| French 75 at Royal Crescent Hotel |
The Assembly Rooms were closed by
now so we made our way to the Bell Inn Pub which was recommended by Sue, the
proprietor of the B&B. My nephew is
very much into music, he plays guitar (and still a little piano like at Jane
Austen’s House Museum) and had worn a Led Zeppelin t-shirt to breakfast. Sue told us that Robert Plant was one of the
500+ owners of the Bell so of course we had to go.
We had a postcard with directions for
the Bell but it was a bit hard to find, even with the help of locals. On the way there, I noticed the Star Inn pub
and we stopped there. We were the first
customers of the night! The Star is
really a cool place. Small, intimate wood
paneled rooms, little tables and benches, very old feeling. Husband got us our beers and chatted with the
barkeep who told him about the damage the building suffered during the
blitz. He showed us a book about where
the bombs fell in Bath and articles about that awful time in history. When husband returned the book, it was a
different barkeep who asked him what it was.
This barkeep has worked at the Star for years and had never seen the
book or heard about the war damage.
Pretty funny.
It was still pretty early when we got to the Bell but a lot of the locals were already out.
Everyone was very welcoming to
husband, who was making friends at the bar, nephew with his Led Zeppelin
t-shirt, and me. We met Jay, Richard,
and several others whose names I can’t recall.
All very interesting characters who drank and joked with us all
night. We decided to get dinner before
the music started at the Bell at 9pm. We
went down Walcott to Thai Basil restaurant and it was pretty good and
filling. Afterwards back to the Bell
where Jay informed us that the band scheduled had to cancel because they were
stuck at Glastonbury so three musicians joined up to make music. It was not great music but kudos to them for helping
out at the last minute.
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| Jay, nephew and me |
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| Richard, husband and me |
This was nephews favorite pub
experience (and we went to a.lot of pubs!). He enjoyed talking to Jay
who is a drummer and shared his experiences playing music in London in
the 60’s and 70’s. The Bell Inn was a
place we could see ourselves hanging out regularly if we lived in Bath, and we
would all like to live in Bath!
We walked back to the B&B and
crashed around midnight. It had been a
fabulous day and evening in Bath!
Next: Windsor Castle, it’s hot and the train keeps
stopping, London
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