We rise to a fine day.
 |
| View Out Our Window |
Breakfast is from 8 to 9, so we shower and dress and
head downstairs to enjoy the meal with two other couples staying here. One of the
couples is from Australia and the other is from nearby, just outside Brighton.
Breakfast is delicious and the conversation is
enjoyable. We have a few more minutes before we need to be going, so head back
upstairs to rest just a bit. The Historical Walking Tour begins at 10:30, so we
head out to the town square at 10:00.
 |
| Bath Cathedral at the Town Square |
Our Guide begins the tour by explaining about the Baths and
how the Romans built a leisure spot here, the only location in Britain of
thermal springs. Over the years, the Baths have been a reason for rich people
to come here and take the waters with hope of improving health.
He proceeds to tell us about individuals who have
promoted the city over the years and how they have fostered the success of
Bath. Bath is now one of only two cities that are, in their entirety, World
Heritage Sites. The other city is Venice. (Okay, it’s three if you count
Vatican City.)
The tour is enlightening and fun. There are lots of
stories about how things have improved and then gone downhill over the
centuries. Our Guide also tells us a bit about Georgian Architecture and how it
was promoted here in Bath. Typical examples include …
 |
| the Royal Circus ... |
and ...
 |
| the Crescent. |
Balance and symmetry are
very important.
If you ever get to Bath,
I recommend the Walking Tour. It is sponsored by the Mayor’s Office and the
positions of Guides are very competitive. It is an honor to be awarded the
position and the Guides are forbidden to accept tips.
After the walking tour, we
look for a spot to rest our legs and ingest some sustenance. We walk around a
bit and the resto that draws us in is Café Rouge. Amy has a sandwich and I have
a bowl of onion soup.
After lunch, there is one
more important location here in town I need to see: the location of the filming
of the death of Javert Javert (Russell Crowe) in the recent hit movie Les Miserables. Yes, it was filmed here
at the ...
 |
| Pultney Bridge. |
 |
| Downriver from the Pultney Bridge. |
(Yes, we've heard the joke: if only they had placed this scene earlier in the film and saved us all from that much of Crowe's singing.)
We are happy to find the location. We head up the hill to
find our car. After a few moments of panic, I find it and we drive to Hill
House to collect our luggage. With a few regrets, we leave for our next
destination. I hope we return to Britain soon and I hope we can manage to
include another visit to Bath and Hill House.
Our next location is Stourhead (Stour rhymes with scour) Gardens. It’s a short drive from here, but MapMe is intent on making our short drives longer than they need to be. We get it sorted out and in another half hour, we are entering the Estate and Gardens. Next is our little bit of confusion about where we are staying. We have booked a room in the Spread Eagle Inn. This Inn is on the Estate, so we should have just driven to it and checked in instead of driving to the Gardens entrance and parked there. (Those staying on the property have admission to the estate included and are allowed onto the grounds without any fuss.)
We walk down to the very
small village and check in and soon after are walking the estate.
The Stourhead family
originally owned the 2,650-acre estate for some 500 years. In the early 1700’s,
the family sold it to Sir Thomas Meres. His son sold it to the wealthy banking
family, the Hoare’s. They demolished the original manor house and built a
fabulous new one and filled it with art and books. The last Hoare to own the
estate gave it over to the National Trust in 1946.
The grounds are
absolutely huge and they are so beautiful! Amy has been worried about not
seeing any fall colors this season, but all is right with the world as we get
to see lots of color here (early in October). There are a number of interesting
highlights around the grounds, but the focus of magnificence is …
 |
| The Estate House |
The artwork inside this
house is stunning and we could have spent many hours looking at the pictures.
But it is late in the day and we had already walked all over Bath. (We went
through the house kind of quickly.) Just a sample, though, here is an inlaid
cabinet in one of the rooms:
 |
| Inlaid Cabinet |
And here is a small
section of the library, showing the largest of the thousands of books on
display:
 |
| Amy in the Library |
We exit the house and
continue on the Garden Path. We walk for what seems like a couple of more
miles. Some of the features we come upon:
 |
| The Lake |
 |
| The Pantheon |
 |
| The Temple of Apollo |
I came across some
trivia: some of the scenes from the 2005 movie Pride and Prejudice were filmed here.
We are done walking for
the day and head to our room in the Spread Eagle. We rest up until dinnertime
approaches, when we descend for drinks in the pub. Most of the people here are
staying at our Inn or across the streets in B&B units. In other words,
there aren’t too many people around.
No comments:
Post a Comment