May 8 - Bath, Somerset, England

We docked this morning in the port for the city of Bristol.  It was cloudy, not too chilly, and the sky looked pretty ominous.  I had a tour to Bath which didn’t leave until 1:30 so I tried to catch-up on some e-mails and things I needed to attend to.

We boarded the bus and were off for the roughly one-hour ride to the city of Bath. Bristol itself is a very industrial city. For example more than 650,000 new vehicles pass through there each year.  There are also lots of tech businesses located there.  During WWII the city was bombed and as a result most of the buildings are post-war era.

Bristol lies at the mouth of the river Avon; no, it’s not the one where Shakespeare came from.  The word “avon” comes from the welsh word “afon” which means river. There are 8 or 9 Avon Rivers here in the UK, literally meaning River River.  Strange .This particular Avon River has a tidal difference of 49 feet, second only to the tidal variation in the Bay of Fundy in Canada.

We followed the course of the river inland through lush countryside with occasional sheep and cattle grazing along the way.  It was beautiful even under gray skies.  The city of Bath with a population of around 110,000 has been inhabited since the Stone age.  The thermal springs may have been worshipped by the ancient Britons before the Romans arrived on the island.  Archaeological evidence showed that the springs were identified with the goddess Sulis, who the Romans called Minerva.  The Roman name of the town was Aquae Sulis, the waters of Sulis. 

Our first stop was the Royal Crescent, literally a crescent shaped building consisting of 30 row houses, each five stories tall, built in the 1760’s in the Georgian style. The baths with their hot springs had become popular during the reign of Queen Anne and so the  wealthy came to enjoy the waters.  The building stands at the top of a little hill with a park spreading out below it. Today, one end of the crescent is a museum; the middle couple of houses are a hotel and the others have mostly been turned into apartments. There are still a couple of single-family units which sell for about £ 8 million.  A flat can sell for £800,000.  I don’t see one of them in my future.

We next drove to downtown Bath passing along the way the Jane Austen house. That author set several of her books in Bath.  Mr. Darcy was standing out front greeting people.  We also passed Bath’s version of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, a bridge across the Avon with stores across its span.

That's Mr. Darcy in the top hat

A pretty little park in the center of town

After getting off the bus we walked through some quaint little streets on our way to Bath Abbey. Along one of the streets there was a bake shop in the oldest house in Bath, Sally Lunn’s house, built in 1482 and where Sally Lunn lived in 1680.  That name should ring a bell if you’ve ever eaten in a Colonial Williamsburg tavern or looked at a CW cookbook.

Bath Abbey, properly named the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, was founded in the 7th century, reorganized in the 10th, and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries.  Major restoration was done in the mid 19th century. In other words, it’s very old. Something I found very interesting was the memorials in the church. There are 617 wall memorials and 847 floor stones commemorating people who I assume were members of the church. The building has fan vaulted ceilings similar to those in the Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey.

Kind of a cock-eyed shot of the church taken from the bus

The fan vaulted ceiling

Main Altar

The organ

Wall memorials

I liked the inscription on this memorial "The Ingenous Mr. Harvey"

After our brief visit and because we had some time a friend and I went into a glass shop in the square next to the church.  A type of glass called Bristol glass is something supposedly unique to this area.  In the glass shop we talked with a very knowledgeable man who turned out to be a glass artisan.  He explained that the different colors result from the different minerals put into the sand when glass is prepared for blowing.  I found a couple of pieces that I liked (small enough to carry home) and found that one was actually made by the man we were talking to so I had him sign the certificate of authenticity.

We still had a little time before the group had to meet to move on to the Roman Bath so we sat at an outdoor café and had some hot tea and people-watched, one of my very favorite pastimes. I saw one woman I had to take a picture of because her hair and outfit were so jarring that she stood out like a sore thumb.  Why would someone do this to one’s hair?

Our last stop for the afternoon was the Roman Bath. The source of the thermal springs is rainwater which falls in the nearby Mendip Hills.  It seeps into the ground to a depth between 9,000 and 14,000 feet where  geothermal energy raises the temperature of the water to between 150° and 200° degrees.  The hot water which is then under pressure bubbles up through fissures in the limestone on which the city is built and eventually comes out in the baths.  A temple was built on the spot between 60 and 70 AD and as a settlement grew around the temple the baths were constructed.  They were in use until the end of Roman rule in England in the 5th century. For a period of time the baths fell into disrepair but in the middle ages they were rebuilt.  They are no longer in use because in 1978 a young girl died of a deadly disease caused by a pathogen found in the water.  Now the baths are just a tourist attraction. On the lower level where people entered the waters, I encountered a Roman, a historical interpreter like the ones we have in Williamsburg.  I couldn’t resist having a picture taken with him.

Looking down at the baths

The hot spring bubbling up must have lots of iron in it 

The Roman I met along the way

Then it was time to gather the group together and head back on the bus to Bristol.  Just before we made it to the bus rain began in earnest, but I didn’t get too wet.

Tonight I had dinner with 3 other ladies at the Thomas Keller Grill and I went to  the pianist’s concert. He was as good the second time around as the first.  Afterwards I went to the Club for a little while, and there were dancers.  I managed to tire myself out (a good thing) and then went home to my cabin.  I may not get this posted until tomorrow, but at least it will be written