Bath - Day 1

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Geo: 51.3814, -2.35745

So this morning I was headed for Bath. But first I had to find my way to Paddington station. Thanks to my trusty train guide (Trish) I knew which trains I had to catch and made it there around 10am. There was a 10 o'clock train but there was no way I was making that (still had to buy tickets) So I found the ticket selling machine and purchased my ticket for Bath. No sooner did the ticket spit out but an announcement came over the PA that there were delays to all stations west of the city. I went to the info counter to find out "something" had jumped onto the tracks at Slough. I was told There may not be a train until after midday. So I went and got myself a coffee and a nice croissant and sat down to relax for a few hours. After all, I had some serious blogging to do. No sooner had a eaten my croissant and had taken two sips of my coffee when another announcement came over the PA. The train now standing on platform 4 is the 10.30 train to blah blah, Bath, blah blah. It was 10.28. What the? I gathered up my things, took a couple of quick swallows of coffee and charged down to the platform. My 10.30 train took off at 10.35 which is much better than the 2 hour delay I was expecting. FYI "something" or more to the point "someone" jumping on the tracks here is a weekly occurrence. Yesh!

So I made it to Bath and it was just a short walk down the road to my hotel. I arrived to early to check in so I left my bag at the hotel and went out to explore. My first mission was to find lunch, on the way I found Marks and Spencer, which was good because my sneakers have had a bit of a blowout and I need some new ones. M&S were no good but I managed to find some reasonably priced sketchers in a store nearby. Then I went in search of lunch for real. I stopped at a nice little place called "the Grapes" and had the ultimate English lunch, bangers and mash....with peas! Actually they were pork bangers and quite tasty.

After lunch I made my way to the Roman Baths, it is after all, what this town is known for. The baths were really cool. The Romans started building them in the first century and continued expanding them over the next 300 years. The initial construction really upset the local Celts who had treated the hot springs as a sacred site and used it to worship their god Sulis. In true roman fashion, the Romans said well we are going to build a temple to our goddess, Minerva, how about we create a whole new deity, Sulis Minerva. So the temple was built and the Celts were happy and the Romans had their baths. The need for a public bath was quite confusing to the Celts who bathed once a month. (The English avoiding a bath....who would've thought) The story goes one of them asked the roman chieftain why he bathed once a day. The chieftain replied "Because I do not have time to bathe twice"

The Romans really were very clever in their engineering. Hot water rising from the springs was funneled into the baths, any excess water was then drained off into the river. All done by a series of pipes and aqueducts. I could still see the remnants of the pipes around the main bath. Off to the side of the main bath there is a change room and next to that the remnants of a sauna. The base of the sauna had piles and piles of bricks called pilae. The floor was built on top of the pilae. A furnace next to the pilae poured heat and smoke through the gaps, heating the stone above and voila, heated flooring. I feel sorry for the poor slaves who had to stoke the furnace, it must have been as hot as Hades. And that stone floor was about 15 inches thick so it would have taken a lot of heat to warm up.

At one point I came across a guided tour I could join in (free tours are offered by the caretakers, I didn't just tag along behind a tour group) The guide pointed out there were change rooms at either end of the baths. Hadrian (the guy who built the wall in England and the gate in Athens) decreed that men and women should not bath together. It was a very dangerous activity in his mind. Although our guide explained he was a rampant homosexual, so maybe he just wanted all the boys to himself. None of those women with their pesky wobbly bits. I had walked past a statue of Sulis Minerva earlier, and had noted her facial features didn't look that feminine. The guide told us that Hadrians favourite lover was a young man by the name of Antinous. There were quite a lot of statues of the gods, commissioned by Hadrian, which bore a striking resemblance to Antinous. I think that's why Sulis Minerva didn't look so feminine.

Bathing in the baths was something enjoyed by the wealthy. It was open to the public but theft was common so you really needed a slave to guard your things while you bathed. The legend goes you could scratch a prayer into a piece of metal, toss it with some coins into the sacred pool and Sulis Minerva would answer your prayers. Hundreds of metal plates have been found in the pool asking for vengeance on the person who stole my robe!

After the Romans left Britain, I think that was the 5th century, it took all of 50 years for the Celts to resume their non-bathing ways. Flooding and silt buried the baths, the roof collapsed and it was lost in the mists of time until the 1700's. Over time the site has been excavated and redeveloped. The terrace around the main bath was actually built in the 18th century but you would not know it to see it. It is supported by roman columns and statues of roman gods and emperors are all around it. The architect was Senior Sergeant Tom Croydan...opps, I meant John Wood.

After visiting the baths I made my way back to my hotel. Just down the road is a lovely little pub called the Huntsman. Not a great name, I know, but there is a comedic tour which starts from there called Bizarre Bath. It was cheap so I went on this walking tour, that had absolutely no historical information, but kept me amused for an hour and a half. The tour leader cracked lots of Dad jokes and did a few magic tricks as he lead us around town and pointed out some of the oddities of Bath architecture. A bit hooghly but quite fun. (I do love that word)

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