Mary Takes a Bath

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As I write this, I'm lying on my couch in the States, awake ridiculously early from the jet lag. Yep, I've procrastinated so much that I'm now almost 2 months behind. My Englad adventures are over. However, now I can stop having adventures (although I am going to Baton Rouge today...) and finish writing about them. The pictures are all taken, the museums are all experienced... now I just have to be coherent.

So come back with me to mid-September to a charming little town known as Bath. When I was planning my trip to England and knew that I'd be spending most of my time in the Cotswolds, I assumed that my first two stops would be Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon. Well, I didn't go to Bath until I'd been there for 3 months, and Stratford was one of the last things I did (entry to come soonish.) Part of this was because I didn't have a car. I planned trips using public transportation where I could, but when someone with a car proposed a trip somewhere else, I tagged along with them. So Bath and Stratford got pushed to the side.

In any case, I decided it was time for Bath. I researched the public transportation and had my plan, and the next thing I knew, a friend with a car wanted to accompany me. And then another friend. And then another. And then another. And now we have two cars. One of which ended up on a detour and got there an hour after the other. And now I'm hungry. And now she needs caffiene. And now he needs a bathroom. And now we're herding cats.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy hanging out with these people. (Hi, Jen, Jamie, Brad, and Susan, if you're reading this!) It's just that we're all very different people with very different interests. So, while waiting for everyone to convene, I went ahead and had a yummy Cornish pasty to stave off my crankiness and went and had a look in the Bath Abbey.

The most fascinating thing about the Abbey is its Gothic exterior. There has been a church there since 675. They built a Norman cathedral in the 12th century, but it fell into ruins over the next few centuries. (Go figure.) In 1499, Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wales, visited the place and was shocked to see what state it was in. While he was deciding what to do, he had a dream that told him to rip it down and start again. In his dream, he saw angels crawling up and down ladders between heaven and earth. This vision is reflected on the West Front (the main entrance) of the Abbey.

Bath Abbey is also the site of the crowing of King Edgar as King of the English. There's a stained glass window commemorating the event, and I found a fascinating and soap opera-ish biography of Edgar at this website. Enjoy.

Once inside, I found that the organ was blaring. (I LOVE organ music!) The Abbey was having different students of organ music play pieces, after which a master organist would do commentary on the playing. The really cool thing was that they had a video camera trained on the organists' hands, and they had put a screen up in the nave so that you could watch the finger work as you listened. I also went down in the crypt of the church to see more museum exhibits, including plaster casts of the figures on the West Front that were made when the whole thing was restored in the 1800s. The outside is still in remarkably good shape.

At this point, everyone had been found and fed and watered, so we all walked over to Pulteney Bridge. It gets compared to the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence, in that it has shops on the bridge itself. Pulteney Bridge spans the River Avon. (This is the same Avon that runs through Stratford, Shakespeare's birthplace.) Before I came to Bath, I had downloaded a free Jane Austen walking tour and was listening to it on my IPod. It was at this point that I learned that "Avon" in Welsh means river, so the River Avon is the River River. We took some pictures in front of the picturesque bridge, and I managed to get one where I strategically placed myself in front of the scaffolding that mars the view.

Next we took a turn in the Bath Guildhall Market. Soon afterwards, everyone decided they were hungry and wanted to sit down for lunch. Since Cornish pasties are filling (to say the least), and I seemed to be the only one interested in going to the actual Roman Baths (thus the name of the town), we split up yet again.

The Roman Baths were absolutely packed, but fascinating. It was only discovered in the late 1800s during some construction work. The Great Bath lies in the shadow of the Abbbey and is a lovely green color. Back in Roman times, the pools were covered and protected from the algae-growing sunlight, but not today. Even though the hot mineral water is still bubbling up as it has for millenia, there are signs everywhere recommending that you don't touch it. This Great Bath is surrounded by balconies that were added in the 1800s for all the rich folks to enjoy.

Another part of the once-huge complex is the Sacred Spring, dedicated in Roman times to Sulis Minerva. 240,000 gallons of 115 degree F water bubbles up every day. In fact, you can see the bubbles of air pockets in the pool. They say that the water comes from underground streams that are fed by rainwater that fell 10,000 years ago. Absolutely mind-boggling. The water was thought to have healing powers, and all sorts of archeological treasures were found in the waters, including coins and my favorite, curses. People would write things like, "Curses on my neighbor who stole my good cloak" on pewter and toss it into the water, hoping for divine revenge.

The Roman Baths also housed a Temple, which were topped by a fantastic Gorgon's head medallion. You also get to see the hot and cold rooms. A floor would be built on lots of little pillars, and hot air was pumped into the space below the floor. I kept thinking I had seen the whole place, only to find more and more rooms.

Once I was done with the Baths, I met up with everyone again, and Jamie and I decided to go to the Fashion Museum. Bath has always been the height of fashion. Nowadays, we buy new clothes to wear on vacations. In Jane Austen's day, people would go on vacation to Bath to buy the clothes. They'd wander around for a few days to see what everyone was wearing and find out what the latest fashions were, then go to the stores and buy, buy, buy.

Located in the Assembly Rooms, the Bath Fashion Museum has a collection dating from the 18th century to today, including a "Dress of the Year," selected by the museum every year since 1963. If you want to see what has been included, click here. They're mostly appallingly ugly, which is always fun.

Speaking of fun, one part talked all about underwear through the years and then let you try on corsets and hoops skirts. We had lots of fun acting like idiots in that part of the museum, that's for sure. Once out of the museum, we had my favorite, a cream tea. See, if we still wore corsets, they would hold in our expanding midsections.

Other attractions of Bath included people watching. Bath is the city of Jane Austen. She lived here at one point, and many of her books have parts that take place there. You can follow the path of her characters on walking tours (live or downloaded from the city tourist site.) Or, you can just dress up. One of the first things we saw in Bath was a parade of sorts of a couple hundred people (no exaggeration) in Austen period costume. Also, Bath was crammed with tourists, so the people that make money off tourists were out in full force. Street performers of all kinds, mostly musical, were dotted along all the main pedestrian streets. It almost seemed like they had some sort of rotation system in place, because you'd see the same guy in three different places of the city as you walked around. There was one guy with long dreds that I ended up buying a CD from after I listened to him play guitar for literally about 10 seconds. He was playing lap slide blues guitar, and that style of music always makes me weak in the knees. 😊 Although only a couple of the instrumental guitar songs ended up being bluesy, it's a really good CD of all sorts of styles. And apparently he has a MySpace page. Lots of fun.

On our way out of town, we made a couple more stops. The Bath Circus and the Royal Crescent are famous examples of architecture, both designed by John Wood the Elder and John Wood the Younger. The Circus is a perfect circle of Georgian townhouses with three evenly-spaced street entries. The Royal Cresent nearby is a semi-circle of thirty Georgian houses. Very swanky, very posh, very beautiful, VERY expensive. There's a lovely aerial view of the Royal Crescent on the wikipedia site. Alas, all my pictures are from the ground.

Altogether, it was a thoroughly lovely day, cat herding aside, and I got lots of pictures. Make sure you see them all (unless you're bored to tears at this point, that is) - they've been divided onto two pages.

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Photos

Inside Bath Abbey
with the screen showing the organist's hands

James Montagu
Bishop of Bath 1608-1616. He replaced the roof.

Jesus and Bath Abbey
Not a statue that I would have identified as Jesus straight off...

Pulteney Bridge, Bath
With ugly scaffolding, unfortunately.

Old Scrumpy
It's a sort of a fermented apple cider, somewhat the dregs... and yes, I did try it. Enh.

Laura Place
The wide avenue where ladies of Jane Austen's era would parade up and down looking for eligible bachelors.

The Roman Baths
Sun + mineral water = algae!

Comments

[Leticia]

:)
Hi Mary! I love how you described the city! I am visiting Bath neext year with some friends! LOVE YOU PICS! Leti (from Argentina)