Trivia for the morning: English children are taught the three important days in English history. They are: 1066, the Battle of Hastings, 1666 the London fire, 1966 England wins the World Cup!

More trivia: i never clarified the proper use of the terms England versus Great Britain. John explained that Great Britain refers to the “sum” of England, Scotland and Wales. So think of Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales as “states” in a nation called the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Still more trivia:  A change I have noted about the landscape as we returned to England was that the stone fences used to create borders around pastures and farms have now been replaced with green row hedges.

Enough schooling, back to today’s activities.

It is misty and rainy today as we leave the country of Wales and head back into England- a good day to be on the bus. Hopefully our good luck with weather has not run out and we have more good weather ahead. 

As we were driving I noticed that the speed limits and mileage signs are posted in US language, i.e. miles/hour rather than km/hr and miles versus kilometers. I find that a bit surprising since the rest of the country is on the metric system.

The rain stopped as we got closer to Bath, our first stop of the day. We are now in the county of Somerset, which is called the “west country”. The people’s accent in this region sounds like what we equate with the guttural accent of pirates. Aargh!

Bath has a rugby team but no football team because supposedly rugby is a gentlemen’s game. Obviously the people of Bath consider themselves to be more refined.

All the homes and buildings in Bath are cream-colored because the construction material is stone from the area. Bath was originally developed by the Romans because of the thermal springs here. They wanted to create a bit of Rome here in England. They later abandoned it when they were booted out of England.  Bath was rebuilt in the 18th century as a resort town focused on the baths the Roman’s built.  It was very fashionable to come here. Jane Austin lived here for 6 years and two of her books are based on the city.  Later people decided going to the seashore was more fashionable and Bath lost its charm. It has made a comeback in modern days and can be quite expensive. 

Germans tried to destroy Bath during WWII even though it had no military value in an attempt to demoralize the English. They failed and Bath remains a fashionable, fairly expensive destination only two hours from London.

Our main reason for coming to Bath was to tour the Roman baths that have been here for 2,000 years. The entrance to the baths looked small and we wondered what to expect, thinking that maybe it was just a quick tour and yet we had been given 2.5 hours before we had to meet our bus again. Our first impressions were totally wrong! The Bath Roman Baths are a MAJOR stop and should be on anyone’s “must do” list if you are in the area. We have seen other Roman baths  and knew how they basically operated but this one was very special.

You are given an audio guide for a self-directed tour of the facility. We spent almost two hours working our way through the facility. It has a fantastic display of the various parts of the bath complex, coupled with extensive displays of artifacts found as they restored the complex. Interspersed with the displays are Disney-like videos of what workers and visitors to the baths would have done when there. All of it was extremely well done. The baths served both as a health club and a temple complex. The artifacts (carvings, jewelry, coins, articles given to the gods, written notes to the gods all left at the facility) were some of the best I personally have seen. The insights given to what people did at and for the baths were top-notch. It was hard to leave without listening to each and every one of the audio guide entries.

Cornish pasties are a mainstay food staple here. They are a pastry turnover filled with various combinations of meat, potatoes and vegetables. We spent too much time in the Roman baths to have time for a sit down lunch so we popped into the local Cornish bakery and bought a traditional pasty “to go”. It contained beef, potatoes and onions. I also noted they were selling the fabulous Portuguese pastry called “pastel de nata “(also known as pastel de Belém) which I learned to love when we visited Lisbon.  They are egg custard tarts dusted with cinnamon that were supposedly created by the monks centuries ago. One of those also ended up in our “to go” bag.  Both were consumed before we returned to our bus for the next phase of our trip.

An hour after leaving Bath we stopped at the  “hippie” town of Glastonbury. I kid you not!  Tie-dyed tee shirts, dread locks, tattoos, bare feet and flower wreaths in the ladies hair.

We only had one hour for those who needed lunch. We did not need lunch so chose to visit the destroyed Glastonbury Abbey that reportedly contained the grave sites of King Arthur and Guinevere. In 1193 a writer said that when they dug up the grave there was a pendent that said  “Here lies interred the famous King Arthur on the Isle of Avalon”. Others later said this was hoax, an attempt to get money to rebuild the abbey that had been destroyed by fire.  I prefer the first story!

The abbey footprint was surprisingly large, although not much remains. A history lesson: The abbey dates back to at least the 7th century. By 1066 it was one of the richest and most important monasteries in England and in the 14th century only was Westminster Abbey more important.  The abbey flourished until 1539 when Henry VIII banned the Catholic religion and ordered the dissolution of churches and abbeys that refused to convert to the Protestant religion. It is sad because history lost a lot of beautiful churches. We wandered the grounds and took pictures.

 

It is back on the road to our destination for the day, Cornwall, where we spend the last two nights of this tour. We seem to go through areas of mist, followed by sun breaks. The roads are larger, there are more power lines on the horizon  and the traffic is heavier. We are back to civilization as we normally live it.