Bath, England

Bridge over River Avon at Bath

While Rebecca & Josh were away all day Saturday at the Puppet Festival we took the opportunity to go out and do something the kids would not be so interested in, so we went to Bath for the day. Lionel & I really enjoyed our day out together and it certainly was good being able to do what we wanted to for the day - drinking coffee and strolling around looking at things in our own time!

Bath is an impressive looking city set around the hills and I can imagine how busy it would get in the summer months - there were enough people around on a very cold, Saturday morning in November! We weren't sure where we were going when we arrived in Bath and so we just pulled into a car park close to what looked like the city centre - we did well because it was only a 5 minute walk to the Abbey and the Roman Baths.

Bath Abbey with Roman Baths to the right

Our first stop was Bath Abbey - this is an amazing example of medieval architecture (built between 1499 and 1616) with a huge fan vaulted roof and very impressive stained glass windows. We also quite liked the western exterior where angels are carved climbing up and down stone ladders.

Right beside the Abbey are the Roman Baths. We looked around the site listening to an audio guide to get any information that we wanted. The springs come up out of the ground here at a temperature of 46 deg C and the Romans created an extravagant series of bath houses to take advantage of the springs. A great day out...

Our weekend was topped off with a trip to the movies to see the latest James Bond movie 'Quantum of Solace'. In Amanda's humble opinion it wasn't the best Bond - there was definately lots of action but none of the usual Bond gadgets.