Bath

we had a week in Bath.  we rented a beautiful apartment in a listed Georgian building.  It was about 10 mins walk from the centre of town, a pretty walk along Great Pultney Street past the elegant Georgian houses, over the Pultney Bridge and past the parade gardens with their beautiful floral displays.

 

The day after we arrived we watched the start of the 2 week long Jane Austen festival.  The first event was a parade through the streets of over 500 people dressed in Regency costume.  they beat the world record for number of people dressed in Regency costume.  It was great to see and the costumes were outstanding.

The parade finished in the parade gardens and they had elegant picnics with fine bone china as they would have done in Jane Austens time.

For the remainder of the week we continued to see people dressed in Regency costume.  You know what, it doesnt look at all out of place in this beautiful city full of creamy Bath stone Georgian townhouses and mansions.

 

 

We did some day trips from Bath to places such as Weston-Super-Mare for a walk on the beach and the pier and double decker bus ride to another beach which was more like a ride at Luna Park as the bus bounced, lurched and swayed along the narrow coastal road.  We went to Wells to see the magnificent Wells Cathedral and wandered around the pretty village.  We went to Glastonbury and climbed Glastonbury Tor and also went to the ruined Abbey.

 

 

We spent some time at the Thermae Spa pools.  It is an ultra modern establishment with two natural spring water fed pools and the water is 33 degrees.  It is the same water that is in the Roman Baths down the road that the  Romans bathed in 2000 years ago.  There is one rooftop pool with stunning views of the Bath skyline and one indoor pool with a bubbly spa in one section and whirlpool that goes around it, so you can hang on to a pool noodle and just float around with the current.  Very relaxing and fun.  There are also 4 steam rooms with different fragrances such as eucylyptus, ginger, lemon and so on.  In the middle of these 4 circular glass steam rooms is an intense shower.  The water comes out with tremendous force.  It is lukewarm so you go into a steam room for as long as can take and then cool off under the shower and then try another room and so on.  all very relaxing.  We spent two hours there.  You can either do 2 hours or 4 hours.

 

 

One evening we went along to a football match.  By football I mean soccer.  Our friend Janet is a supporter of the Bristol Rovers and a friend of hers got us all free tickets to the directors box so we went along.  Dont really know anything about soccer but it was interesting and the Rovers won 3-1 so that was good.  We had sandwiches and tea and coffee at half time.  there was a crowd of nearly 5000 there so the atmosphere was pretty good.

The week went very fast and we didnt do everything that was on our list.  We'll have to come back another time.