The first place we went to was the Bath Abbey. It really wasn't a major Cathedral or anything, but had so
many plaques on the wall as memorials that there was hardly any place to hang something else. They only had probably one major sarcophagus. Sir William Waller made a tomb for his wife Jane, who died in 1633. It was also supposed to be for him as well, he didn't end up being interred there. So while there is a monument with a man and a woman lying there and two epitaphs, one is blank. I can imagine that if they are together in the afterlife, quite a bit of "windging" against him by his wife. Windging is another word for griping, or whining that the Brits use a lot. I guess a possible reason was that he was on the Parliamentarian's side during the civil war and lost Bath to the Royalists. The Royalist apparently hacked at his effigy and made a mess of it, so I guess he didn't want to be there. Next we went down to the crypt and saw a small museum they had setup. The Abbey wasn't really the Abbey and is only a small part of what was originally there. Henry the VIII's handy work again had destroyed most of the buildings and now the city occupied much of it. But, they had dug down deeper in the crypt and found skeletons of Monks and evidence of buildings and structures there back to Roman times. Buildings have been built on top of buildings, on top of even older buildings and the more you dig, the more you find evidence of previous civilizations.The hot water spring in Bath is what not only gave Bath its name, but also made it a center of worship since before the Romans even showed up. The water comes out of the ground at 117 degrees F and 250,000 gallons per day. The Roman's thought that it was built by the Gods and there was a temple to the God Sulis Minerva there. They have on display as
much of the temple as could be found. Pieces of it had been uncovered over the centuries and much of it was lost when it was destroyed after the Romans left. Some parts of the temple were actually taken away and built into other buildings. A church 8 miles away had a piece of the temple built into a corner of the church. It has been brought back to the museum now.You can see by looking at the pool that the lowest portions of the walls around the pools are Roman and the pool itself is largely Roman, but everything else above this line was added and rebuilt. The water bubbles up and releases gasses, but it isn't boiling. It flows through various culverts that the Romans built 2000 years ago and into the different bathing areas. The water has a red tinge to it and they actually have a fountain that you can sample some of the water from, but I only tasted it and it was so metallic and warm that I didn't want to drink anymore, but apparently people over the ages have said it was quite good. Teri drank the whole thing (only about a half of a cup). The amount of coins and such that they pulled out from the pools date back to the iron age. They have pulled some 15,000 coins out of the pools so far. This shows how people have made offering to the Gods over the years. There were even curses written on soft metals thrown in asking for the God's help. The Romans had quite a setup of bath houses around the place and there are still some in operation. We walked around the city center and there was a spa there as well.
We moved the car because our 4 hours was nearly up and drove up to where the Royal Crescent and the Circus is. The Royal Crescent is a series of 100 town houses or so that are all connected toget
her in a crescent shape. It was built in the mid-1700's and people still live there. There is a nice park out in front of it and it look down over the city. We walked back down into the city from there and went into a Jane Austin museum, but it wasn't really orientated for children, so we left quickly. Makenna fell asleep while we walked to the oldest building in Bath (circa 1482), which houses the Sally Lunn bakery/restaurant. It's also known for this bun that Sally would make. Sally came over from France in the 1600's and turned this old Roman house into a bakery and would sell her buns (I know that doesn't sound good but that's what she did). I went in to get Teri one of these buns, as she just had to have it, it only cost £1.80. There was a small display showing how they had dug down in the dirt there to find the Roman road beneath and also a basement oven, where I guess, Sally used to work. It was nice with Makenna sle
eping to just walk around a bit and look around without Makenna constantly doing something. We walked back up to where we were parked near the Crescent and not to far from there the is a place called the circus. This is a series of 30 town houses built into a circle. The circle is broken by four streets coming in symmetrically around the circle with a round-about in the center and several large trees center to that. It is something neat to see, but I guess it is something you just check the box on when you come to Bath and then move on.We left after that and tried to find a couple of castles that our GPS said were near by. We went down some single lane roads and by lots of sheep and stuff to only end up in a dead end for the first one. The second one led us into the Bath Spa University, where there was a fortified manor which is now part of the university. I guess they teach people how to spa there...whatever that is. Probably has something to do with painful massages. You can have it Bath, I can't stand having someone drilling a bony elbow into my back! Al, a friend of ours back home, bought himself a massaging chair. While we were home over the holidays, I sat in it for a half an hour, really trying to like it, but all it did was make my back feel bruised for 4 days...bah!
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