Day 10— Bath, Malmesbury, Gloucester, Cheltenham.

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Weather a little wild over night and a few heavy showers and half a tree came down on the camper one across from us, but fortunately we weren't under a tree. We are camped in a deep valley too, so must have been wild on the hills. No TV reception here as the valley is so deep.

We have started the day in no great hurry. Most of the attractions over here don’t open till 9.30 or 10 in the morning so you have no great hurry in the morning. We headed in to town and 5 minutes later were parked at the far, far, far end of the long stay parking in town. We tried to walk the streets and find the Royal Crescent, but all the buildings in Bath look the same. We eventually found the Roman Baths an d Pump Room. Looks great and a very informative tour, but the majority of the old, impressive looking stuff, was actually built in the 1800’s , over the top of the old Roman Baths. Just the same, was very good attractions and kept everyone busy for close to 2 hours. We headed back to the car park, and about 20 minutes after getting down the road to Malmesbury, we noticed a ticket on our windscreen for “PARKING IN MORE THAN ONE CAR BAY”. Off course we did, the trees next to our bay were so low, we couldn’t get all the way over to the edge. But, the car park wasn’t full, and we parked at the very far end anyway!?!?!?

Arrived at Malmesbury as I have ancestors from here, and it is supposedly a very pretty town on the edge of the Cotswolds. Apparently no one has told the locals that tourists might consider coming. There was absolutely no parking options. Our trip to Malmesbury became a drive through, and our hopes for the rest of the Cotswolds were dealt a blow. We decided to head on to Gloucester instead of the proposed Cirencester.

We headed off for Gloucester. As we entered town, Tanya spotted the canals and port. We parked and headed over that way and checked out the assembled canal barges. At this point, we didn’t realise how many of these we were going to see over the next few days. It turns out, much like in Europe, in England, you can get many places via the myriad of canals and lochs. We wandered around the full circuit of Gloucester, killing time, and inhaling the terrible odour of what smelt like rotting garden mulch or vegetable matter. We did a circuit of the Cathedral and didn’t bother going in. By now, it was still early. It was 4.30pm and we had time to kill. We eventually decided to make a start on tomorrow, because we didn’t want to camp any where near the oppressive odour.

We headed to the Briarfields Caravan Park near Cheltenham, which was half way to Stow on the Wold, which was scheduled for tomorrow. Briarfields was cheap, easy to find, reasonably priced washing facilities, and the dryers actually, completely dried your clothes. A really good decision in the end. Jordy was happy as well. The camp site was probably only 25% full, and pitches well apart and there was plenty of room to kick the football after buying a needle for the pump in Bath yesterday.

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