Bath

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Well today was the end of my roadtrip cos I returned the car in Bath today. I totally recommend the Kennard B&B cos it's just such a beautiful place. Loved the decor and it's an old fashioned Georgian townhouse. The view out of my window was of some sitting gardens.. Went down for breakfast and the parlour was really stylish... not tacky or overdone.

After breakfast I 'took a turn' in the gardens out the back for a bit and chatted to some other tourists before returning the car. Then I was dropped back to Bath for another day. Parking is a pain in Bath so i was thankful I didnt have to park overnight again...

Jane as sketched by her sister

First stop Jane Austen Museum. I got back to Bath too late to join the Jane Austen tour which is a walking tour of areas that were mentioned by Jane or relevant to her life. Eg. Where she used to live, where her parents got married etc...

Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) set 2 of her novels in Bath - Northanger Abbey & Persuasion and made reference to Bath in some others. I studied Emma (HSC) & Pride and Prejudice at school and liked them for her perception of human nature and her satirisation of human character - subtle but effective.

I might have read Northanger Abbey & Persuasion at some stage but i dont remember which seems a pity now as I'm now in Bath and would love to be able to put place to references in the book. Possibly a good thing i didnt pay to go on the Jane Austen walking tour. I guess it's interesting to see the inspiration and to learn about the world she lived in to see what influenced her writing..


Today was a very packed day. After visiting the Austen centre I joined a free walking tour of Bath. the history of Bath is quite fascinating. It was a small town in the 1600's with a problem of disease. The plague even went through cos the hygiene of Bath left something to be desired. The 'healing' properties of the water was becoming known and people also just visited because they heard that royals and nobles had previously visited and they wanted to jump on the sycophantic bandwagon. 100 years later the population had exploded and multiplied hundred fold.

The current streets still mark the city limits that expanded. Eg. Westgate St. was where the city's west gate used to be. Today I felt like a dummy and wished I knew more about architecture. A lot of Bath was ruins until the early 18th century when Beau Nash cleaned it up. He and a guy called John Wood are responsible for design and building of Bath. To keep the Roman feel, the architechs used Palladian design which is very concerned with symmetry. The columns and windows are precisely placed.

Wood designed the Georgian style townhouses outside the main town centre and we walked around Queens square. His son then carried on his work designing the Royal cresent which is interesting architectually as it keeps a lot of symmetry but as the name suggests, the block of townhouses is cresent shaped. Mathematically it makes dimentions of the townhouses interesting as the house might not be as wide at the front as the back. There is a hotel in Royal Cresent. 1 room + breakfast cost 700pounds/night.

The walking tour lasted 2 hrs then i rushed off cos i had booked an Abbey tour as well.

Palladian architecture - Roman influence with symmetrical placement of columns and windows.

Queen Square - designed/built in the early 1700's by John Wood

most of Royal Cresent - designed/built by John Wood jnr. in the late 1700's

Bath Abbey tour goes above ceiling to the bell tower of the Abbey. Had to leave bags at the bottom because it would be a huge climb. The first bit was around 150 stairs... and the stairwell was very narrow and steep. The climb definitely worked the legs and im used to stairs in my townhouse but not as many with such a steep gradient. One poor lady was crawling up the stairs on all fours and I was scared she was gonna have a heart attack climbing.

bell ropes

The view from the first landing was quite nice. We went into the bell chamber and saw the ropes that are pulled to ring the bells. Being a bellringer is a tough job because firstly you have to climb the stairs to get to the chamber lol... and then because you need quite a great deal of strength to pull the ropes cos the bells are quite heavy.... then try to do that in sequence and in time for an hour or so...
With the exception of our guide and a couple of younger people, we were told that most of the bellringers in the country are OLD! around 60+ yrs old... They're trying to do a recruiting drive to get younger people...

view of the Roman Baths from the middle landing of the Abbey

Mel hates looking down...

At the end of the tour I actually found going down 200+ stairs was prob worse than going up cos i dont like looking down!!