Visit to Bath and New Friends

Saturday we headed west, dropping Deb and Bob off at the airport for their return to Raleigh. We continued west to Bath and the home of a lovely family we had exchanged homes with last summer but had never actually met. We stayed in their home in Nice, France while they were in Cape Cod.   They had graciously invited us to come stay the night with them while we explored the lovely city of Bath.  Getting to meet them is most definitely the high point of our 3 weeks in England.

They live about 10 minutes outside of Bath in a lovely rural village with a magnificant view of the countryside.

Bath is a beautiful city.  I can not understand why Queen Victoria didn't like it.

Bath, England

It is quite different in appearance from other cities in that all of the buildings are built of what is called Bath stone – a pale yellowish limestone that is found in the area. It has even been decreed by Parliament that all buildings will be covered in Bath Stone.

We took the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour and visited The Circus, which is a round green surrounded by a complete circle of buildings built in the round. Nicholas Cage used to live in one of these townhouses.  

The Circue

We also went to the even posher Royal Crescent and visited a restored Georgian House. Bath was quite the social scene with a “season” that lasted from Sept to March every year.  It was here that we saw the chairs that they got carried around in.  We learned that the term "cheerio" originated here as a call for their chair - "chair ho", to indicate that they wanted to leave.

The Royal Crescent

The city of Bath was originally founded by the Romans back around 75 AD and is the home of an amazing set of roman baths. There is an active hot spring which still feeds the baths today, although they are no longer in use.

The water is green because now the baths are not covered and they turn green from algae, but the water is still very warm. 

The site has been mostly excavated and is extremely well presented with displays and a good audio guide. It was really interesting.

We took the train back out to where our friends lived, getting off in a tiny village named Freshford.

We walked up the road to The Inn at Freshford which is a really lovely pub – and across from a sheep field.

We had an excellent meal and a very fun evening with David, Ingrid, Ingrid’s sister Kara and Kara’s boyfriend, Paul. There were also 4 well behaved, beautiful children who were mostly not-seen and not-heard because the pub had a playground out back.   

A very memorable evening indeed.