Bath

Bath achieves a remarkable sense of light through one main factor: the vast majority of its buildings are built from, or at least faced with, cream-coloured sandstone. This uniformity of colour can sometimes be bad - Edinburgh, because it's so grey, felt awfully gloomy when it was overcast. Here, because the colour is so light and because it's offset with darker roofs and dark roads and a variety in the cream - well, it's just stunning. When you add that it's a bit like Rome in that the town seems to be built on at least seven hills, and that more modern buildings still often follow the Georgian trends for terraced houses: Bath is a very attractive town.

Of course, the big attraction of Bath is THE baths, Aquae Sulis - the Roman bathhouse complex that I believe is one of the best preserved in the world.



The bath complex is a wonderful museum. It would have been so easy for it to be either overwhelming, with too many artifacts, or entirely cheesy. It's neither. There is a good, relatively small, selection of things to look at: reconstructions of mosaics, and the Gorgon pediment, were my favourites. I also like the tiny little gems which may have been offerings, but were more likely lost by their owners because the glue in the setting was loosened in the water; many of them have tiny pictures etched on them, like a discus thrower or animals. Then you go out and through the different sections of the bathhouse itself: massage rooms, the cold-plunge room, etc. Of course, the centrepiece is the grand pool itself:



Tourists get an off-kilter view of the site, really, because the pool would have been roofed, for the Romans - there's a bit of the arch left, at ground level - and part of the museum which shows the courtyard and main temple area, which is now contained within the building, would have been exposed to the elements. Still, it's another occasion where you get to see something that's survived - in some form or other - for 2000 years. The other thing that makes a visit to the baths very special is the audio guide. We've eschewed the guide everywhere else, but there's a good reason for getting it here: the Bill Bryson commentary. Which he clearly recorded as he walked around himself, because you can hear background noises like the springs in the recording as well as right where you are.

Interestingly, we think that the experience was somewhat better in winter. This is partly because in winter it's easier to see the steam rising off the water; it's also because there were fewer people. Having said that, we were amongst the first people through the doors this morning - it was only as we left that there were lots of people crowding around.

The other thing I loved about Bath is the Abbey.



That previously mentioned sandstone helps here, too, because Bath Abbey manages to evoke an immense sense of light and majesty, for me anyway, because the flying buttresses and soaring columns seem somehow lighter in weight because they're lighter in colour... something like that anyway. It's aided by this incredible window:



... which has something like 56 panels showing seems from the Bible.

And of course, we love ceilings:



Finally, I tried really, really hard to buy Pride and Prejudice and Zombies here, because I've found it nowhere else. Sadly, here too it was sold out. Darn it.