A Weekend in Bath

I have managed to get myself about three trips behind on my travel posts. Let's see...Rome, Bath, Amsterdam. Yeah, that's three. Since we have yet another coming up (Scotland with the folks) in a few weeks, I need to get through some of the old! So forgive the delayed posting, and onward...to Bath.

Our first long weekend trip whilst in London (and, by the way, Brits love them some whilst) was to Bath. Bath has been a spa town and destination for leisure travel off and on since Roman times. That's a long time. We took the train down and spent a full weekend there. And oh the train ride. Let us narrate our train ride in texts sent between my wife and I on the journey: It totally feels like a third-world leg on The Amazing Race. If you book 90 minutes on a train, why would you not get assigned a seat? Sorry you did not bring your book. I have my phone to fiddle with. And my tacos to wear. Yeah, it is a bit not smooth. Hello stranger, would you like to know my life story? [moments later] He sings in a barbershop group! I thought the guy with the flowers got off. Me too Now he is back His flowers are gone We should source code him Thankfully our stop was shortly after the group of drunk young hooligans got on board and started playing drinking games.

Our first major site in Bath was the Abbey. Our guidebook played it down as a fairly minor site, but we were quite taken with it. It's very bright compared to most of the churches we have visited in the past, and has 'fan vaulting' in the ceiling. We like fan vaulting. A lot. I had several dozen pictures of this ceiling to pick from. The abbey also has a few minor-but-awesome-to-us things to see, including a plaque in honor of the first mayor/warden of Australia and another to a guy for his contribution to spelling. Spelling! It was on a smaller scale than many of the huge catholic churches, but it was just what we needed. We also drew the attention of a nice older man who was serving as a docent and got a nice inside view on a few of the highlights, at least according to him. Whenever we encounter overly enthusiastic older people as docents, we always point out that that is us in a few years.

The abbey had a tower climb, so of course we were helpless to resist. Unlike many of our climbs, this was a guided tour. We learned all about their carillon and that there is actually an English way to ring bells -- you first turn them all the way upside down, then rotate them a full 360 each time you chime them. Neat! The views over Bath were nice, and I couldn't resist getting some artsy-fartsy shots framed by bits of the church itself.

We also hit up two minor museums on our first afternoon, the Museum of Bath At Work and the Fashion Museum. The first was mostly a recreation of a hardware store and factory form one of the early entrepreneurs of Bath, who was quite adept at identifying ways to turn waste into profit. Every time he found a bit of scrap that was produced as a side-effect of one manufacturing process, he came up with another to consume that scrap. There were some neat models and working mechanisms, including his original workshops for machining parts and casting bronze. The workshop was belt-driven from a central generator, and you could push a button and watch it go. Mesmerizing. Also, loud and dangerous. They also had a few interesting vehicles, including this velocipede. I want a velocipede, just so I can can have an excuse to say 'velocipede'.

The fashion museum was fun, but after a long day of walking and exploring we were pretty pooped. They have a huge collection of interesting and significant outfits, as well as displays on the changing fashions of the last two centuries. It was surprisingly interesting, though we were a bit too low energy to appreciate it as much as we could have. A quick cup of coffee and some cakes afterwords solved that nicely.

The last big site (and arguably the biggest) is the Roman Baths. This is a site that was built over two thousand years ago to take advantage of a hot spring that comes up in the area. The spring had been modified for various uses over the next few hundred years, but eventually fell into disuse. Then, as always baffles Mary and myself, it was forgotten and buried in the rubble and refuse of time. Large portions of it have been excavated now, and it makes for an amazing visit. The site was as much for religion as for leisure, and the museum houses all kinds of interesting artifacts like curses that people would write on metal tablets and then throw into the baths to ask the gods for vengeance. Of course these types of details and the mechanism of the place most caught our eyes. There is a huge network of tunnels and channels for moving the water around, which were an amazing feat of engineering.

All in all we had a great time on the trip. While there were some bumpy bits (the train ride out, the fact that not a single breakfast place was open at 9:00 am) overall it was a relaxing and enjoyable destination. It was a low-key, low-stakes trip, and it was exactly what we needed.