Rub-a-dub-dub!

This is to be a very quick summary of events that took place the weekend of Sept. 18 and 19th: my trip to Stonehenge, Salisbury and Bath!

Brooke, Alison and I decided to take advantage of the Travel Club that’s offered here at ISH, and signed up for a £55.00 2 day trip to the South. Basically, the weekend was action-packed, and we did an amazing amount for what we paid.
Saturday morning, we met the other travelers in the ISH parking lot to depart at 8 AM on the House’s Mercedes Minibus (not as exciting as it sounds). We met Mark, our tour guide and driver, and got underway coffees in hand. The drive to Stonehenge was slightly terrifying (on the motorway, with lots of clunking noises coming from underneath us), but only took about an hour and 45 minutes. When we got close to the site, traffic started to back up. Eventually, we came over a small hill and could see Stonehenge sticking out of the plain below us, looking very small and surreal. We actually had to drive right past it to get to the parking lot, which to me is a totally bizarre concept: cars alongside an ancient and mysterious stone monument. Everyone piled out of the bus, and walked down to the tourist centre to get our audio guides, and then we were free to wander around for about an hour. I very quickly lost interest in my guide, and took a million photos instead of listening to it. The weather and light conditions were perfect: a few clouds and sun that made the grass look extremely green, and I got some really good shots (posted on Facebook of course).

After the hour was up, we headed back to the minibus and off to Salisbury. This was a big change from London. We walked through the old part of the town to get to the cathedral, and it was amazing the difference in scale and architectural style of the buildings. Salisbury didn’t have to deal with bomb damage and rebuilding, so it gave off a much older vibe. The street names helped this as well; they were all called things like “Oatmeal Street” and “Butcher Street.”

I was almost bouncing with excitement by the time we got to the cathedral. It’s one of the largest and best preserved in England, has the tallest spire of any in the UK, and has one of the only surviving cloisters. We had a tour around the whole interior, and our guide, Alison, informed us that she’d been educated at Cambridge, fancy that! The tour was really interesting, and all kinds of fascinating tidbits were pointed out to us, including the “bumping stone,” a stone in the ambulatory near the altar with an indentation in it where choirboys have been initiated (by having their heads “gently” tapped against the stone) for centuries. After seeing the world’s oldest working clock, and the best preserved copy of the 4 remaining Magna Cartas, the three of us headed outside to sit on the green and enjoy the sun for a bit before meeting the group in town and walking to the bus.

We took another short ride to get to Bath, on some very hilly and curvy and terrifyingish roads, stopping on a hill that overlooked the city to take pictures. You could see exactly how planned and uniform all the buildings and streets are, owing back to Bath’s fashionable nature in the Georgian period, which involved large scale design. Upon arriving in the city, we checked in to our hostel, the White Stag, left our bags in the rooms, and met Mark again to walk into the downtown area. This is dominated by Bath Abbey, a really well-preserved gothic church that is adjacent to the Roman Baths. Because Bath is a touristy destination, most of the downtown area is catered towards pedestrians, and there are lovely shopping streets, and squares to sit in. Our favourite place was the main square, with the Abbey, baths, shops and an arcade bordering it. There are lots of street musicians performing at any given time, and we sat and listened to two guys with dredlocks playing Chinese instruments called Hangs (they looked like giant pots) for quite a while.

Before going to meet the rest of our group for dinner, Alison, Brooke and I decided to follow Mark’s advice and cross Pulteny Bridge (designed to look like the Ponte Vecchio, with shops on it) to Pulteny Street, one of the most prestigious in Bath. We arrived in a small circus and took some pictures of the beautiful row houses. While this was happening, a man wearing a sea captain’s hat appeared beside me and asked if I knew how old the buildings were. I replied that they were from the Georgian period, and he then informed me that they were built in 1793, the “year of the French Revolution,” and that he had learned a lot about it from youtube. He then suggested that you can find out all kinds of things on youtube, including some highly inappropriate material, which he informed us of. None of us knew what to say, and looked at each other with our mouths open. We thanked him and walked away a few steps, turned around, and found that he had disappeared. Bizarre experiences ladies and gentlemen.

After some exploration, we met the group back in the middle of town at the oldest house in Bath, Sally Lunn’s. The house has been in use as a bakery since the early 18th century, and is now a restaurant as well. The meal was included in our fee, so we all chose from a set menu, and paid extra for wine. We had to wait quite a while for our food, but it was very welcome once it arrived. I had a Sally Lunn bun (a big airy bun with crispy crust) with garlic butter to start, and then steak with béarnaise sauce, potatoes, and fresh veggies, which was delightful. We got to know some more people on the trip at dinner as well, and felt very multicultural. There were 2 girls from Turkey, one from Lebanon, another 2 from Thailand, a couple from Cuba, a guy from Malaysia, another from the US, one more from China, and us, the three Canadian musketeers.

Following dinner, a bunch of us decided to go to a pub, since everything is so much cheaper than in London, so we walked down the street to one, ordered a few pitchers of Pimm’s to share and had a delightful time before heading back to the hostel.
The hostel itself was pretty good, despite the massive struggle we all had with getting our fitted sheets to stay on the mattress. Everything was clean, and secure, and we had a shared breakfast provided in a small kitchen in the morning.
We met outside at 9 to walk back to the downtown for our thermal spa (oh yes) session at 9:30. We arrived at Thermae on time, and everyone was given a wristband with a chip in it to be used for the highly advanced lockering system, and to get in and out of the spa. After we were changed, we had 2 hours to spend doing whatever we liked on the 4 levels of awesomeness. The three of us decided to start at the bottom, in the “Artemis” pool, which is fed with natural 46ºC water from the thermal spring that gave Bath its name. This was pretty much the most delightful pool I’ve ever been in, and we spent some time just floating around counting our lucky stars. After that pool, we moved up a floor to the steam rooms. There were 4 glass-enclosed rooms within a larger room equipped with a large shower from the ceiling in the middle to cool people off. Each individual room smelled like something different, and we went in them all: Lavender, Eucalyptus and Mint, Frankincense, and Peppermint (which was a little too much). But the absolute highlight of this whole spa adventure was the rooftop pool, which is exactly as amazing as it sounds. Again, it was thermal, but on the roof of the spa, overlooking all of Bath on both sides. And, since it was Sunday morning, all the church bells were ringing while we lounged in the water and looked over the city. Incredible.

We were all thoroughly relaxed after this experience, but since we had some time before meeting at the Roman Baths for a tour in the afternoon, the three of us headed to the Jane Austen Centre’s Regency Tea Room for some lunch. It just so happened that there was also a Jane Austen conference in town, so there were all kinds of people walking around in costume to add to the ambiance. Lunch, or should I say High Tea was amazing. All three of us ordered different kinds of tea, mine was called Empress of Peking, but got cheese and cucumber sandwiches, and warm scones with clotted cream and jam. It was quite the experience eating this delicious food in the middle of Bath, after a thermal spa session, while being watched by a portrait of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy that was hanging on the wall…

We walked back to the Roman Baths after our tea for a self guided tour with an audio guide. The exhibits and guide were absolutely fascinating, as I didn’t realize the wealth of artifacts that have come out of the site. We had about an hour and 45 minutes to take ourselves through, but I wish I’d had more time. The Great Bath itself, as you can see in my pictures is quite an interesting shade of green, and it was really cool to see the water bubbling up from underground in the King’s Bath, and flowing into it. You could feel how old everything was, and for a poor sheltered Canadian generally surrounded by buildings less than 20 years old, it was amazing.

After the Baths, we met the minibus to tour around some other parts of the city, including the Circus, and Royal Crescent, took a few group photos, and headed back to the motorway home. This is where things stop being exciting, so I’ll just end on this note, since I’ve written far too much already!
I’m slowly catching up!