Firstly, just to allay any fears for our safety, despite the recent terrorist car bomb threat happening just 20 short metres or so from our front door, we are both fine, the bomb didn't go off and we slept through the whole thing! When we stumbled from our apartment to go to work on Friday morning, we had to hail a nearby bobby to be let out of the streams of police tape, and answer "where did you two come from?" and then "how many other apartments are there?".
Despite all this, we were still excited as this weekend saw the first of our planned trips, a weekend in historic Bath! Sally and I snuck out of work a couple of hours early on Friday afternoon so we could collect our hire car, the beautiful Alfa Romeo Brera... or more accurately, the slightly more spacious Alfa 159. Despite the change in vehicles, we soon managed to negotiate London Friday afternoon traffic to find ourselves on the M4 towards Bath! Arriving around 8 on Friday evening, we quickly set about finding dinner and The Royal Oak just across the road from our B&B fit the bill wonderfully. A quick walk through town, and we were ready for bed!
Saturday saw us arise to a full english breakfast and an early start to our tourism. We soon walked into town and found ourselves at the Roman Baths. To wander through buildings built some 1800 years ago, and to experience the range of history on the one site was quite amazing.
The Roman Baths, with the Bath Abbey behind.
Wandering through Bath, we took in most of the important sights such as the Circus and the Royal Crescent, a pair of incredibly impressive locations.
The Circus.
Bath on the whole is an amazingly picturesque city, and it has a sluice!
The Bath sluice, awesome.
Sunday morning saw another early start to make sure we could fit in the world famous locations we had in store for our trip home to London. We headed South East towards that most pagan of all the world icons...Stonehenge. Stonehenge is one of those things that almost everyone who's seen it says "it's a little disapointing when you see it for real". To a certain extent this was true, it was smaller than it's portrayed, but it is still an amazing example of the ingenuity of the ancients. The main disappointment was the poxy audio guide, here's a few classic excerpts - "The stone nearest you is the key stone, we think there were four of them, and that they formed a perfect rectangle!", "The heel stone behind you shows the processional avenue. You can't see the avenue any more, but it may have gone down the hill, turned right and gone over that next hill to the river Avon. It may have been how participants arrived at Stonehenge for the rites that may have been held here.". That's right, a lot of mays, and very few definites. It would have been a lot quicker to just say "It's here, it's amazing and we have NO IDEA what they hell its here for".
Stonehenge.
Salisbury Cathedral.
Inside Salisbury Cathedral.
Having had our fill of history, we turned the Alfa homewards and headed back to London. It was an excellent weekend and very very successful. We now await our next planned weekender...Edinburgh!
And for those of you who appreciate my long suffering cartographical works, here's the link to my updated super map!
1 comment:
Bath photos brought back a few memories, having visited in 2001. I also recommend a trip a little further North-East to the Cotswolds - especially if its a fine weekend, as there are heaps of photographic villages.
-TT
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