August 7, Tuesday

This morning we timed our walk from Ashley House into the Abbey. We were taking a tour the next day that left from beside the Abbey on the north, and wanted to make sure we were in time. We would hate to pay all that money and then miss the boat-er-minibus. I wore a vest and light windbreaker, and was still chilly. To those who live in Bath, breezy 60s is a very nice day. The warm weather was gone, by our standards. It was sunny, though, with 100% blue skies.

We headed for the Roman Baths, which are on the Abbey's doorstep. This is not coincidence. The ancient baths were a religious site. Later cultures built their religious structures on the same site. I guess it is holy land no matter what faith holds it.

In the days of the Celts, before the Romans came, these hot springs were a center of religious activity. The early Celts worshipped their goddess of healing, Sulis, there, and pilgrims came to be cured. When the Romans took over, they named the holy area Sulis Aquea, the Waters of Sulis. Continuing the concept of holiness and medicine, they built a temple to their goddess of healing, Minerva. Eventually the temple complex, which became enormous, was called Sulis Minerva.

The baths are beautiful and much bigger than you would imagine. There is an audio tour to lead you through them, and it takes at least an hour and a half. If you wish to pause, rest, and enjoy the atmosphere, you'll take longer. I would advise you to take longer. In addition to the audio information, there is interpretive signage with diagrams that are very interesting and helpful.

Bob and I split up, as each of us has special interests, and spent time at different places in the tour. We passed and waved every now and then. One of the baths is the frigidarium, the cold bath. Following the ancient custom of tossing coins into the pool to pray for health, visitors were encouraged to throw coins into the frigidarium. The money went for a good cause. I can't remember what, but I do remember thinking it was a cause I wanted to support. I tossed in some money.

Other people felt strongly the same way. There were British pound notes floating above the coins. To my surprise, there were also United States dollars floating with the pound notes. I counted ten one-dollar bills in just the waters in front of me. First, I didn't know there were that many Americans around; and second, why were they carrying dollar bills? They sure weren't worth anything in Britain.

A comprehensive museum of artifacts and architectural remains is attached to the Baths. It surprised me how much genuine interest the tourists had in these archaeological finds. Since the baths are on the “tourist trail,” I expected that more people would be just walking through and taking photos to say they had been there.

The tour ended at the Pump Room restaurant. An elaborate fountain stood at one side of the room behind a long white-clothed table. Mineral water flowed from the spouts into the fountain basin. Everyone was offered a glass of the healthful, curative waters. I thought it tasted good, and drained my glass. But then, I have been accused before of having no discrimination in taste. Most others, including Bob, took only a few swallows, and rolled their eyes. I drank Bob's glass up, too. I didn't know if there was anything wrong with me, but if so, hopefully the waters of Sulis Minerva would cure it.

The Roman Baths, as I said, opened right upon the Abbey Church Yard Square. One of the shops across the square from the Pump Room was a Pasty Presto. Bob bought two traditional pasties and a Boston Brownie for lunch while I held a table on the square. Other than fending off dive-bombing pigeons, we had a lovely lunch in the sun. A young guitar street player entertained at the upper end of the square. In front of us, an acrobat did a comic act on a unicycle.

When the acrobat took a break for a cigarette amid his gear piled against the building, an oriental woman popped out of the pavement. She was small, and had just one marionette to offer. In contrast to the acrobat's self-aggrandizing, she said nothing. She just laid down a hat for coins and manipulated her little marionette. The puppet crawled, danced, and marched. First children noticed the doll, then adults were taken by the puppetmaster's skills. She never looked up, but she was a showman. She had the marionette crawl over to a child and pat it on the foot, then would send the doll off into a wild dance. Children squealed with laughter. Soon a little crowd gathered and cut off our view. We went back to our Boston Brownie.

After lunch we jumped on the Red Bus again and rode to the Circus and The Crescent. John Wood and his son built Bath in the late 1700s. That is to say, they had control of designing the major building endeavors in the town. They created a city of elegant Georgian homes that are as beautiful today as they were over 300 years ago.

The Circus, also called the King's Circus or the Regency Circus, is a circle of terraced (row) town houses around a central garden. Circus, obviously, means “in a circle.” Picadilly Circus in London is a great circle of tall buildings with streets radiating out from it. The Bath Circus was built on speculation. The tall narrow town houses were just shells, and the purchaser finished them inside as they pleased.

Just a short ways from The Circus is The Crescent, built by the younger John Wood. This is thirty terraced town homes built to form a crescent. Again all the fronts are identical classical Georgian, a restrained design favored in the 1700s. The result is serene classic beauty. I studied the The Circus and The Crescent years ago in art school, and never forgot them. So to actually see these most outstanding examples of Georgian architecture and to walk past them was a thrill for me.

Number One The Crescent is now owned by Bath Trust, and being made into a museum of what a Crescent town house would have been like inside as decorated by a wealthy owner. Remember that only the fronts are uniform. Beyond that, the owner had his say. If you walk behind The Crescent, you can see all the different additions and gardens created by the homeowners. It's quite a contrast!

Five rooms were finished for touring at Number One, The Crescent. They were all interesting and stylish. But the kitchen amused us the most. There were recipes on the long worktable we could read. A docent gave explanations and answered questions. On one counter several 1700s mousetraps were displayed. The snap-type ones had little furry mouse rear ends sticking up. But the real prize was an authentic dog wheel beside the roasting spit. I had never seen one, and had only barely ever heard of them. But there it was, a circular cage-like wheel in which some dog labored away turning the roasting spit. I suppose the dog was very good at it, as he wouldn't get bored or fall asleep like a human spit-turner might.

We caught the bus back to the town center and Abbey Square. I just loved sitting in the square with the walls of the Abbey towering behind me, and watch the world go by. The first bench we chose was chilly in the wind, so we moved to a more protected location. Bob had lost his water bottle, so I went across the street to buy him another one. By some coincidence, the shop not only sold water, it also sold ice cream. I had a mint chocolate chip, and I got Bob a maple walnut. We sat before the Abbey, licked our ice cream, and listened to yet another street guitarist serenade us.

Somewhat later, we turned our faces toward home. On the way down North Parade, we watched another cricket match over the cast iron fence for a while. The activity of running and throwing and batting is exciting, even if we didn't know the what and why.

There's a railway bridge at the end of North Parade, and in between two cement stanchions it looked like there might be a path. Ranata had said that the canal ran high behind the houses of Pulteney Garden, and I wondered if that was the way to get up to it. I was going to find out. Yep, there was a path. It went up in a fair incline for a while, and passed the ends of two streets.

Then it got abruptly steeper and I climbed through a woods. I came to some steps, and counted them as I went up. Twenty-two steps. When I crested the top, I nearly smacked into a longboat. Only a narrow strip of grass ran between the woods and the canal. There were benches along the strip where you could sit and watch the longboats and barges go by. You would be so close to the boats that you could look in their windows and see what the owners were having for tea. This was a place where boats could moor overnight, it said on a sign, but they couldn't stay longer than forty-eight hours. There were nine boats tied up right then.

It would have been fun to sit on a bench for a while, but daylight was speeding towards nightfall. I returned to Bob, who was leaning on a fence waiting for me. When I described the steepness and the steps, he lost all interest in seeing a canal he could see other places without all the work. Besides, it would soon be nine o'clock, and a glass of wine was calling us.

August 8, Wednesday

Renata fixed us an early breakfast at Ashley House. Our packs were ready to go with water bottles, umbrellas, and breakfast bars. We were still chewing our bacon and mushrooms as we headed up North Parade Street.

We got to the tour pick-up point in plenty of time to be the second couple to get on the new white mini-bus, so new the company name hadn't been painted on it yet. We had to go all the way to the back to get good viewing seats. The other windows had either curtains or partitions cutting off part of the view. You have to watch that on long distance bus seats, too. If we have a choice of seats, I always watch as I go down the aisle, and pick one with a full window view. Buses cover up their windows with not only curtains and partitions, but also words. It's not great to watch eight hours of scenery with the word “Exit” in the middle of it.

The minibus seats were very narrow and there was hardly any foot room. I had to hold my backpack on my lap. There were fourteen of us in the bus, and we became very close friends-literally. I'm not sure the bus had shock absorbers, either. It was a spine-jamming ride. All this aside, we had a great time with the driver, who was knowledgeable and witty.

Our first stop was Stonehenge. It was sunny, but the Salisbury Plain winds blew freely over barrows, meadows, sheep and tourists. I had my hood up and a scarf around my neck. We bought our tickets to go to Stonehenge, and then walked through a subway under the road to get to it. Well, to get as close as we could to it. You're not allowed very close any more. Cars and motor homes were parked along the high link fences on the two roads bordering Stonehenge trying to view without paying. It was much better to spend the £4.60 to get inside. It's hard to take photos without a grid in them when shooting through a chain link fence. Even though you can see Stonehenge from the road, you're still a lot farther away than we were.

You hear a lot about Stonehenge and see photos of it everywhere. But to be right up close to the monoliths is awe-inspiring. We walked around them several times, and took a lot of photos. One day both of those roads that run by Stonehenge will be gone, and Salisbury Plain will again be open and windswept as it was in the ancient past. When the modern clutter is taken away, we will be able to experience the real majesty of the monument as those before us saw it.

The second stop was Avebury Circle. Avebury Circle is at least as revered, if not more revered, than Stonehenge. It is considered one of the best prehistoric monuments around. The stones are not as big or impressive as Stonehenge, and many of them are gone. However, the henge, or ditch around the site is much more visible than Stonehenge, as well the placement of the missing stones. When you see that grassy ditch, and it's amazing to think it was dug out with deer antlers and cow shoulder blades. Even more amazing that it's a mile around and eighteen feet deep. It's possible to walk the mile around the monument, but we were on a tour and on a time schedule. I should imagine that it's a lovely walk through the Wiltshire countryside.

Both sites, Stonehenge and Avebury, are still sacred places in pagan religions. There are ceremonies and festivals at Avebury to mark pagan holy days. Photos from these events were available at the town gift shop. The information center in Avebury is in a little country church. The church pews and altar are in the front half of the room, and the information center in the back. There is a large beautiful pub in Avebury, but I didn't get time to look inside. I suppose the tourist and religious trade helps to support it.

From Avebury we took a wonderful ride through the Wiltshire countryside. I thought Suffolk had a lot of thatched cottages; I think Wilshire has more. It was an English country watercolor come alive. We passed through gently rolling, sheep-dotted green hills. Serene streams verged with trees trickled through the hedge-rowed meadows. And then there were the thatched cottages. The driver told us that those quaint little cottages are now hot items, and a cottage with a thatched roof goes for upwards of a million pounds. We had the good luck to pass a cottage being newly thatched, complete with thatchers working up on the roof. A million pounds. Whew!

The village of Lacock, our next stop, was a time capsule nearly untouched for hundreds of years. When Henry VIII razed the abbeys, he was smart. If an abbey building could be used or sold, it wasn't knocked down. The abbey at Lacock became a manor house, and the family still lives in it. However, the manor and all the town now belong to the National Trust. The Trust rents the historic homes, but you must be content to keep it on the outside as it has been for 400 years. One of the streets in the village was used as a setting in the BBC Pride and Prejudice. I thought I knew which scenes they were, but I'm not sure.

We had lunch at The George Inn (est. 1340) in Lacock. The driver said the medieval inn and the fireplace with a dog wheel were wonderful, but the food was average. We had shepherd's pie, and agreed with him. Definitely average. However, during lunch we discovered that most of the people on the tour were Americans. So then we got into the “Where are you from?” and “Well, where are you from?” The service was slow, but the conversation lively.

And, yes, they had a dog wheel. The medieval fireplace made a whole wall, and the dog wheel was on the end of it, on a side wall. This put it in a narrow passage right in front of the bar. I waited and waited to get a picture of it. People persisted in ordering food and drinks at the bar and got in the way of my photo. The fireplace itself was truly medieval, stony and dark. Horse brasses hung along a huge blackened timber that formed the top of the opening. I collect horse brasses. Sure would like a fireplace like that to hang them from.

We strolled around Lacock and took photos. The Inn had a back garden behind their back garden. The far one was on a lawn under shady trees. Bob sat out there while I explored the four tiny shops next to the inn. It didn't take me long to discover that there was nothing in those shops I couldn't live without. That was good, because it was time to move on. I collected Bob and we climbed back to our seats in the minibus.

Our last stop was another timeless village, Castle Combe. Travel writers called Castle Combe the “Prettiest Village in England”. It was virtually the same as it had been when the wool trade died in the area and people deserted the village hundreds of years ago. The family who owned the manor and the village sold it off. Castle Combe is smaller than Lacock. I think it was more picturesque. I took lots of pictures of doors, flower boxes, By Brook, and other picturesque details. The houses are now expensive holiday homes, but, like Lacock, their outward appearance is nearly the same as 300 years ago. The former manor house is now an upscale hotel.

The little brook locale, with the trickery and set pieces of film, was the harbor for the 1966 movie Dr. Doolittle. Some of the homes in the village were also used. I have not seen that movie for over thirty years, but I recognized the buildings (once they were pointed out to me) and, with a little imagination, could see how they did the harbor scenes at By Brook. As a person who can't remember where she put her cell phone an hour ago, I amazed myself with that.

The clock from the tower in the old town church had been brought down into the church. It had no face. Back then, people could not read clocks. Those working in the fields couldn't see it anyway. Everyone depended on the church chimes to tell the time.

The clock was in a large glass case at the rear of the nave. There were buttons at the side of the case that lit various parts of the ancient clockworks. The mechanics seemed so simple and primitive, yet that clock had run for hundreds of years.

When I was leaving the church, a little girl outside was swinging the wrought-iron gate back and forth. She slammed the gate on me. Her father, behind me, started to remonstrate. She ignored him and smiled at me through the bars.

“Say 'Open Sesame,'” she declared.

“Open Sesame.”

She swung open the gate with a grand gesture, and motioned me through.

I bowed as I went by. She inclined her head. Very regal. Some day she may be Queen.