After just over an hour, we arrived in Bath. We weather was overcast with patches of rain and that looked like it would continue for the whole day. We left the train station, bought a map and made our way up the road towards the very visible Bath Abbey. We walked around the outside and marvelled at the architecture before finding the entrance to the Roman Baths.
I had been before and remembered it well but it was great to take Lou around and show her the sights. The Roman Baths provided a backpack for Will which was invaluable as he would have probably pulled them down had he been let free. We spent a good hour walking around the tour and feeling really quite young considering the age of the things we were looking at and touching.
We emerged from the Baths to a shower as the rain intensified. We bought an umbrella from the local Scottish wool shop and made our way to the Jane Austen centre thinking about Annabel pretty much all the way up the hill. Outside the centre a lovely chap guided us indoors and was very friendly to Will. I took Will upstairs to the café and had a chocolate brownie while I fed him his lunch.
Lou went around the exhibition albeit hurriedly since the boys were upstairs and probably cranky! There was a feature exhibition of the dresses used in a recent mini-series of an Austen novel. There were samples of her writing, a fan display, newspaper excerpts from events in her lifetime, and during the presentation before viewing the displays, a short rundown of her life - especially her short stays in Bath.
The rain was still pouring as we walked up to the top of the hill to the Circus and the Royal Crescent. We took some photos and had a quick look before deciding to head back down the hill to a café for a nice cup of tea to warm us up.
We went inside the shopping mall and found a café on the top floor. After having tea and scones, we walked down to the river Avon flowing beside Pulteney Bridge. We walked down and along the riverside. The rain had eased off so it was nice to spend some time in the small window of sun and blue sky that we had. There was a grass maze which we spent a short amount of time running around before the carried on down the river.
We had a good walk down to the next bridge and looped back around to the Abbey. The skies were turning black again so we decided to go inside and take a look. The Abbey was fantastic inside and the sun’s rays shining through the stain glass windows looked fantastic. We had a good look around and let Will stretch his legs running between the choir pews. The hours of the day had disappeared quickly and fortunately the sun fought through the clouds to give us a nice send off. Lou initially felt very down about Bath but thankfully we were treated to a nice ending.
We met up with Mark at the station in Cheltenham right where we left him and we headed back to Naunton. Mark’s parents had offered to look after the children for a night so we headed out to the now open Upton to Puccini’s – a nice little Italian restaurant – where we had pizza, pasta and some nice Italian wine. Upton was still quite flooded in streets close to the river, but they had receded enough that life had returned to (almost) normal for most of the people in the village. We had a lovely evening and returned home to find the boys still sleeping soundly.
