Time for a Bath...visit

Although it was a little way away, we decided to visit Bath today. Normally we would take the back roads to get around because you see much more but today it was the A34 and then the M4 to get there quickly. An hour and an half after leaving Radley we were pulling up in the Lansdown Park & Ride a few miles out of Bath itself. Using the Park & Ride is an excellent way of seeing a popular town...a short bus ride later we were in the middle of Bath and we didn't have to worry about the car.

Milsom Street, Bath

Bath Abbey

As it was a sunny Sunday it was going to be busy...it wasn't quite 11 o'clock and it was already quite crowded on the streets...so the obvious first stop was the Roman Baths. The place is absolutely amazing...the self-guided audio tour took us two hours to complete...and we absolutely enjoyed the visit.

The Great Bath

The King's Bath, site of the Sacred Spring

Roman plumbing...the drain of the Great Bath

Roman artifacts discovered in the ruins

Over lunch I decided to see if there were any geocaches nearby and discovered that there were two special ones that only required you to find clues and not an actual cache...very convenient in crowded locations. Better still, one of them made mention of free Mayor's Walking Tour of Bath. With the afternoon tour due to start soon, we went off hunting for the tour instead of caches.

At 2 o'clock, we set off in a group of about 15 on a walk around Bath with Phil as our guide. For the next two hours we were fascinated as Phil took us to some of the key icons of Bath and explained their history. From outside the Roman Baths where we started, we visited the other sites of two hot-water springs before walking up the hill to visit Queen Square, Royal Crescent and the Circus before returning to where we started. As our walk had taken up most of the afternoon, there was just enough time to grab the clues for the two geocaches before getting a bus back to our car for the drive back to Radley.

Phil, our guide

Queen Square

Royal Crescent

Circus

The streets of Bath