Europe: Bath

It was a few hours on the bus to Bath – chosen purely because it was kind of close to Stonehenge and not because I knew anything about the town. It was quite a small town, set between the green rolling hills of the English countryside, filled with stunning scenery and sheep, spray-painted with pink and blue X’s on their backs (I wondered if the pinks were allowed to hang out with the blue’s, or if there was a bit of cross-territorial Romeo and Juliet action going on?).

If I had learned anything on arrival in the UK, it was never to go anywhere without an umbrella. I had use for it as soon as I arrived and decided to walk around to get my bearings, taking refuge inside a church of no particular importance until the rain stopped, and walked until I found a nice pub for supper.

The following day I visited Bath Abbey and Museum, where Bath college students were practising their speeches for a special afternoon service in the church which was stunning, it’s towers and high vaulted ceilings in view from anywhere in Bath.

The museum was set underground next to the church, and because of the special service I was the only tourist there, which meant I had a personalised tour from the curator, who kind of looked like he was around during the Medieval times he was describing to me, but had some great stories to share.

After the museum I visited the most famous of Bath’s heritage-protected sights – the Roman Baths. The 90 minute audio-guided tour took me through the temples and baths built over the natural hot springs between the 1st and 5th centuries AD.

The iron-filled water still bubbled to the surface of the springs at a rate of thousands of litres every day, at a more than comfortable temperature of 46 degrees celcius. The drainage system built all those centuries ago continues to pump water through mostly intact remains – many of the baths filled with pennies and coins from around the world, thrown in by tourists hoping to pay tribute to the mystical goddess that oversaw the baths.

That afternoon I joined a small bus tour going out to Stonehenge. The driver was hilarious, telling stories on the 40-minute drive out to the site, and stopping to show us various sites on the way, including some well-known Australian families’ ancestral lands, and well-known bands’ recording studios (always attached to a pub). On the way to Salisbury Plains, where Stonehenge lies, we visited Laycock Village, a small town about the size of my bathroom, owned by the National Trust with land only rented to those tenants who can prove their family heritage within the village, tenants including Camilla Parker-Bowles (who can afford to keep her house now she’s married to the future king, I suppose).

The incredibly quaint thatched roof village was also home to Harry Potter’s aunt and uncle during the filming of the Harry Potter movies, in which the anicent Abey (read: Hogwarts castle) also featured, standing within beautiful gardens. I didn’t pay to go into the Abbey to see the furniture and artwork, preferring to roam the stone carved cloisters instead.

Stonehenge was ok, not as impressive as i thought it would be, but simply the age of the stones and the mystery of why they were there (and whether Merlin the Magician is really buried here) was more than enough to make up for it. The original pine posts said to be raised here long before the stones were erected were in existence 2000 years before the pyramids in Egypt, which is amazing. The sones themselves were raised around the time of the burial of King Tutankharmun, and fell into disuse 3000 years ago – long before the Great wall of China and Parthenon in Greece were even dreamt of. Impressive, yes?

After my hectic and rather windswpt day (at least it wasn’t raining) I arrived in Bath and took one last walk around the old cobblestone streets before an early and dreamless sleep back at the hostel.

-Sarah