Bath

So I just got back from Bath, where I went with Rachel and Dan for a nice little holiday. We arrived on Monday afternoon at the Bath View Apartment, which was essentially the souped-up attic of a house on a hillside overlooking Bath. And by souped-up, I mean it was like stepping into an Ikea catalogue. After the shabbiness of my humble abode, it was wonderful to revel in a place that had not one, but two sofas (!), a microwave, little trendy fireplaces of questionable functionality, heated floors in the bathrooms (!!!), and a view from one side over a beautiful little landscaped garden with an apple tree, and from the other side of the city of Bath itself.

We set out the next day in a rented car for Avebury, a tiny town east of Bath whose only distinction is being home to one of the oldest and largest evidences of neolithic human habitation, four times bigger than Stonehenge and 500 years older. We walked through sweeping hills among circles of mysterious stones set into the ground, some as tall as 10 or 15 feet, erected nearly 5,000 years ago without any modern tools, along limestone paths studded with flint. Sheep grazed among the ancient stones, maintaining the grassy landscape as they have done for thousands of years. There was a man-made hill, the size of the mounds we saw in Poland, off in the distance, the work of ancient people, constructed with deer-antler picks. I was surprised at the relative humility of this place, home to such ancient ruins. The museum, which housed 5,000 year-old artifacts, consisted of a converted barn and another tiny room in a building nearby. The artifacts themselves were the result of some seemingly off-handed excavations that took place in the early 20th century, and there had apparently not been any significant (or significantly-funded) research in the area since then. What a shame that thousands of people go to gawk at Stonehenge from a distance, when they could come to Avebury and walk among the ancient stones, even touch them. But at the same time, part of the charm of this place was its desolate and mysterious landscape, which would be ruined with the advent of too many tourists. But a word to the wise: if ever in Bath, it's Avebury you want to visit, not Stonehenge.

After communing with the stones, we headed back home, and arrived with Dan utterly fed up with driving on the wrong side of the road and the car, on narrow country lanes, dealing with about a million round-abouts, and not really knowing where we were going. We therefore decided to ditch the car, and set off the next morning on an eight-mile walk from Bath. The route of the walk was from a thirteen year-old guidebook that we borrowed from the lady downstairs, and contained directions such as "now walk through a gap in the hedge" and "continue along the edge of the field, and when you reach the second sign-post disregard its directions and continue on straight." Right. We forged on ahead, first on a 4 mile-long path with a houseboat-filled canal on one side and thousands of wild blackberries framing pastoral hills on the other. We then turned off into a tiny village, where in search for a restroom and a place to eat lunch we asked for directions to the nearest cafe at one of the houses. The wonderfully kind lady told us that there were no cafes nearby, but promptly invited us to use her outdoor table on the patio for our lunch, fed us coffee and homemade banana bread, and chatted with us about politics, freecycle (of which she is the head for the Bath region), and her children. Refreshed with food and the excellent hospitality, we continued through woods and pastures, managing to find our way despite the fact that the gap in the hedge had (not surprisingly) filled in in the last thirteen years. We ended up at a sham castle (a "19th century folly"), which was no more than a couple meters thick and which commanded a truly excellent view of Bath and the hills beyond. Finally, and somewhat unbelieveably, we managed to find our way home with the help of the trusty guide-book.

The next day was our last in Bath, and we split up to see what we wanted to see of the stately, mildew-stoned city. I saw the world-famous architecture of the Royal Crescent and the Circus, the former of which was a prince standing on a hill sweeping his cape over his shoulder and the latter a coquettish Victorian lady spurning suitor after suitor. Then the Abbey with its gorgeous stained-glass windows and upward-sweeping architechture, Pulteney Bridge, lined on both sides with shops, and of course the touristy Jane Austen centre. And at the end of all this all that was left to do was hop on a bus back to London, munching on a Sally Lunn bun, regretting only that I had not managed to take a single bath while in Bath.