Tag Archives: Bath

The Royal Crescent, Bath

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We did quite a lot of walking when we were in Bath, the Royal Crescent was one place we had to visit. It was quite  a hot day and there were lots of people relaxing on the patch of green which is opposite the Georgian houses. The crescent was designed by John Wood, the younger between 1767 and 1774. The photo below is a stitch of two photos I took on my phone.

Royal Crescent, Bath, a stitch

The stone that most of the buildings in Bath were built with is cream coloured, and apparently isn’t really ideal for house building, but over they years it has kept a lot of stonemasons busy, replacing blocks which were ravaged by the weather and would have become porous. I think it’s a type of sandstone.

Below is a photo of the right hand end of the crescent which Jack took on his camera. I’m sure if it had been on my phone I could have removed all of the people from it. Anyway, as you can see it’s quite a busy area. After  complaints from the residents about noise from traffic and particularly tourist buses with commentary, traffic has been restricted. I bet the residents of Edinburgh would love it if the same thing happened there. Traffic on cobbles makes life very noisy for them.

end of Royal Crescent, Bath, Georgian houses

I had been under the impression that Bath had avoided being bombed during WW2, but apparently it was bombed during what were called The Baedeker Raids – after the famous tourist guide books. Previously I had read that Hitler had wanted to keep Bath intact as he had plans to make it his British headquarters! Anyway, this crescent has featured in quite  a few films and Bridgerton, but Jack was not too impressed. He didn’t like the grassy patch of land opposite which was full of people. I can see that that might not be a great view for the people living in the houses. On the other hand most of the Georgian houses in Edinburgh have a road between them and the private gardens opposite which only the house owners  are able to get into, they’re well locked up, iron fenced and hedged around so you can’t even see in!

Anyway, if you visit Bath the crescent is definitely worth a look, it isn’t a long walk from the centre of the city.

The houses in the photo below are just to the left hand side of the crescent. As you can see, one of them has had a strange sort of balcony added on to it, instead of the more usual small cast iron balconies.  It looks a bit incongruous.

By Royal Crescent, Bath

Pulteney Bridge, Bath

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One of the places that the Bath Heritage Centre suggests that visitors might like to see is  Pulteney  Bridge. So we walked to it, it is very close to the centre of the city. It was designed in 1769 by the Scottish architect Robert Adam. I have to say that it’s a thing of beauty, to my eyes anyway, and the weir is like nothing I’ve seen before.

Pulteney Weir, weir, Bath

At the heritage centre they told us that you had to pay to get into the garden to get down to the River Avon, but we felt it had been expensive enough to get into the Roman Baths so we just walked across the bridge and went down the steps at the end of it. They led to a little patch of greenery with some trees and benches, it was just perfect really. The boat in the photo below just turned around at that point and went back under the bridge as it can’t get past the weir.

Pulteney Bridge Boat, River Avon,

Robert Adam was actually born in Kirkcaldy, very close to where we used to live, but as usual the local council demolished Gladney House which he and his brothers had been born and brought up in, just typical. It would have been such an interesting house to visit too.

Jack took this video of the weir

 

 

The Roman Baths at Bath – 2,000 years of history

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Roman Bath, Bath

When we approached the entrance of The Roman Baths we thought there was an enormous queue to get into it, but as we got closer we realised that the queue was for something else, so we got in straight away. As I mentioned before it’s expensive, but the ticket price included the use of an audio guide which was informative.  As we had travelled all the way from Scotland we decided that we couldn’t NOT go in.

Below is a photo of Bath Abbey which we didn’t go into, we had been in several churches and cathedrals within a few days so we gave this one a miss, however you do get a good view of it from within the Roman baths, exactly from where I took the photo above.

Bath Abbey , Bath

The photo below is of the hot springs bath, you can see the water bubbling, it’s naturally hot and that amazed the Romans, they decided it must be a sacred place which is why they built the whole complex there. In Georgian times the water level was higher, right up to where you can see the orange sort of tide mark. People used to sit on the stone blocks within the arches with their heads just out of the water. This was not for the faint hearted as the water was not at all clean after so many people using them, many of them with skin problems. It must have caused more problems than it ever cured!

hot bath Bubbling Waters , Roman Bath

It was crazily busy in the baths, especially in the interior parts. There’s a lot more to see than I had imagined. Below is a gilt bronze  head of the godess Sulis Minerva which was discovered during excavations. She’s an amalgamation of the Celtic godess Sulis and Roman godess Minerva. The Romans liked to include parts of the local religions wherever they settled.

Minerva, Roman Baths, Bath

They’ve discovered lots of things which must have been lost in the baths over the centuries, including this lovely Celtic style brooch. Whoever lost it must have been really annoyed! You can read more about the history of the place here.

Celtic Brooch, Bath, Roman Baths

In places you can look down to what was the foundations of the baths.

Roman Bath foundation stones, Bath

Below is a big plunge pool with just a small amount of water in it but you can imagine people sitting around on the stone steps having a gossip, or maybe not, this was the Frigidarium, the cold pool.

Roman Bath Pool, Bath

There were various altars around the place and below is a reconstruction of one with just the corners showing the original Roman pieces. I imagine that they thought it was a good idea to be nice and clean if they were going to be praying to Minerva or anyone else.

Roman Stones + Pediment, Bath

Below is the remains of a horse sculpture.

Horse Sculpture , Roman Baths, Bath

And there are more figures of horses in what remains of the mosaic below.

Roman Mosaic, Bath

We spent almost two hours there and by that time we were definitely ready for lunch before going on to the next places of interest in Bath. Although the entry price seemed steep it was worth it. The model below shows what the buildings would have looked like in their heyday. The baths were covered with arched roofs as you can see, it would have made it a lot cosier than being open to the elements as they are today. There were areas for massage and general pampering, all by slaves of course. For some reason the videos and photographs of pampering were all of scantily clad women!!

Roman Bath model, Bath

Southern UK road trip – Roman Baths, Bath

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I’ve been away in England for over a week. We drove down as far as Glastonbury which we hadn’t planned to do but as ever when we see places on road signs we are tempted to visit them, at one point we were also just a few miles from Avebury so we couldn’t resist.

Before that though we visited Buxton, Bakewell, Bradford-on-Avon, Bath, Frome, Stow-on-the Wold, Devises, Bathford, Midsomer Norton, as well as Glastonbury, then on the way back up north we visited Avebury, Alcester, Wakefield, Sunderland and Tynemouth. By then we were mighty glad to get home and I immediately came down with a bad cold, I’m still sneezing my head off, but at least it isn’t Covid.

We packed so much into every day that I didn’t even manage to get one book finished while we were away, I was just too tired to read at night. As I bought a lot of books in various bookshops and charity shops my book piles have expanded more than somewhat! I’ll blog about them soon. Meanwhile, below is a couple of photos I took of the Roman Baths at Bath. It’s quite expensive to get in but we spent about two hours there, it was really busy so the price doesn’t put people off. It cost £45 for us both with £1 off each ticket because we’re old! It was worth it though and we’ll never be going down that way again. Bath is a strange combination of Glasgow and Edinburgh. It has the shops of Glasgow but the Georgian buildings of Edinburgh. I almost didn’t bother going to visit Bath because it said recently on TV that Edinburgh has the hughest number of Georgian buildings of any place in Europe, but we just take them for granted and don’t make a fuss of them as they do in Bath.

Bath, The Roman Baths

The Roman Baths, Bath

Flights of Fancy

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I’ve got into the habit of paying calls to favourite blogs late at night, just before I get ready for bed. You do this at your peril because it can be really bad for your sleep pattern. Sometimes an interesting post just grabs a hold of your brain and you can’t stop it from wandering around. This happened to me the other night when I read this post from Karen at Books and Chocolate.

Before I knew it I heard the clock downstairs striking twice and I don’t know when I actually did get to sleep. The upshot of that is this list of places I would like to visit, or books I would like to be in. Karen, I hope you don’t mind me ‘nicking’ the idea.

1. I would have loved to have been a woman lucky enough to escape to the small mediaeval Italian castle, San Salvatore, which features in The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim.

2. Cornwall. I wanted to visit Cornwall for years after reading Rebecca as a young thing and eventually did get around to it. Many Cornish books later, it’s Winston Graham’s Poldark books which, set in Napoleonic times, I would love to be able visit. Minus the “morbid sore throat” obviously.

3. In a punt on the Isis at Oxford during the Brideshead Revisited era. It would have to be a gorgeous day for a picnic and ideally Aloysius the bear would be my companion – he doesn’t have a big appetite and he is teetotal!

4. On a Mississippi riverboat with Mark Twain as my companion and the smell of good cigars.

I found this riverboat photograph on Wikipedia and almost swallowed my tongue in surprise, (honestly) when I read that the Delta Queen was built in Dumbarton, the town I grew up in. I love the internet!

5. In Neverland telling stories to the “lost boys” and giving out lots of “thimbles”. (I’ve obviously got empty nest syndrome.) Sadly, few people read the original Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie.

6. In Newfoundland around about the Quoyle’s Cove area, as featured in The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. Lots of warm clothing required.

7. An inhabitant of Tilling in the Mapp and Lucia books by E.F. Benson. I would love to contribute to the gossip.

In reality, we have a little list of places which we hope to visit one day and we are working our way through it.

1. Stratford upon Avon. To see the sights and whichever play they have on at the theatre there.

2. The City of Bath. I know that Jane Austen wasn’t keen on the place but I would love to walk in her footsteps and visit The Pump Rooms and generally soak up the Georgian atmosphere.

3. Derbyshire. For Jane Austen reasons again.

4. Norway. Ideally on a ship so we could sail up a fjord. I did this when I was 12 and remember it as being magical.

5. A certain French farmhouse in Normandy again, close to the D- Day landing beaches.

6. Cornwall again, especially the atmospheric Tintagel area which is steeped in King Arthur lore.

7. American Civil War areas. I’ve been interested in the subject for a long time and have the Ken Burns film with that great character Shelby Foote. This isn’t likely to happen as I don’t want to fly or have to go through all the security stuff. Still waiting for that “Beam me up Scottie” thingy.

I could go on for a long time, especially with the book ones, but seven seems like a good number to stop at.

I’ve just realised that I forgot to mention The Orient Express, minus a murder of course.

If anybody would like to share their ‘wish to visit lists’ with me, please leave a comment or a link to your post on the subject.