Cheltenham to Bath( and home)

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June 20, 2008
Cheltenham to Bath( and home)

We began today with a bus ride to Cheltenham rail station, then took the train to Bristol and transferred to the train for Bath. At the Info Office Wednesday, the gal told us about a free walking tour of Bath, it begins at 10:30 AM. So we were there with time to spare and visited the Bath Abbey before hand. Its construction was originally started as a Catholic Church but the timing was bad. Henry VIII had his quarrel with the Pope and construction was stopped. It eventually was finished as the parish church of Bath, it became a Church of England around the fifteenth century. However, there has been a church on this site since the seventh century.
We met Sue, our Mayor sponsored tour guide, a knowledgeable woman of the Bath area. We walked for almost 2 1/2 hours and discovered things we would have never thought about. She talked about the construction of the Roman Baths and their healing remedies. Long after the Romans left the British rebuilt the Baths and invited the very wealthy to visit and be cured of every imaginable ailment. (We tasted the mineral water, yuck!) The influential people in the history of Bath, Richard Nash, John Wood and William Oliver were connected with various sites we visited in the city. We viewed the Circus and the Royal Crescent, this very up scale area houses folks for one to two million pounds! The Jane Austin Centre provides an overview of the author's connection with the city. Of course we stopped at the oldest house in Bath (1482). Sally Lunn was a baker and today her recipe is still used to make Sally Lunn's Buns! It was a great tour and the price was right.
After a late lunch, we started our way back "home".

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