July 13 - Bath and Stonehenge

Today was our last day in southwestern England, so after another breakfast at the cottage we traveled to Bath. Situated on top of a natural hot spring, the city was home to an extensive bathing complex during the Roman occupation of Britain. Today, the site has been excavated and turned into a fabulous museum which provides an overview of life in the first century A.D.

Through audio guides and exhibits we learned about the Roman engineering that was behind bath complexes, their practical and spiritual uses, and the people who frequented the baths.

Their system of under-floor heating was truly ingenious (the floor was raised and hot air circulated underneath), and showed how in some ways we really haven’t come all that far. At the end of our tour we were given a glass of water from the mineral spring; it tasted like it had been in an iron pot for several days but was apparently healthier than most of what we drink on a daily basis.

After a delicious pub lunch near the museum we walked into the residential area of town to see the Royal Crescent. Used in several films, it is a perfect example of Palladian architecture, consisting of 30 houses fronted by 114 columns in a huge semi-circular shape.

The houses were really neat on their own, but the sheer size of the Crescent was astonishing – pictures certainly don’t do it justice...

... Largely because it is too large to fit in a single frame.

On the way back to the cottage we drove past Stonehenge, which is just as impressive as I imagined it being. We didn’t walk around the site because it was packed and you can’t actually get very close, but we parked on a hill nearby and managed to get some great photos.

We ended the day by passing through a few military towns in the area searching for a War Graves Commission cemetery. It was the first and certainly not the last research-related detour we took, and although we were ultimately successful we did drive around in circles a fair bit. We stopped at the Riverside Inn in Lechlade-on-Thames for dinner and then returned to our cottage to pack for the drive to Yorkshire.

GWV