Day 44 Monday 4 July 2016

Departure at 8am from Cardiff & traffic was fairly heavy for a while then once we got onto the motorway things improved as we sped through the Welsh countryside. We crossed the Severn Estuary over a newish bridge over 5km long, the tide was out, all 14 metres of it & there were mudflats everywhere. Looking upriver the old Severn Bridge could be seen in the distance. We have passed back into England & the change is instant, all the road signs are in English only. The journey was uneventful but beautiful countryside, more sheep & cattle, wheat. We arrived in the old Roman bath city of Bath. To see Bath has been on Ron’s bucket list for a long time.

Bath as we enter is full of ordered rows of limestone Georgian houses, cheek to jowl, lining the roads on both sides. We stop near the cathedral & walk the short distance to the ancient Roman Baths. The baths were originally built by the Romans about AD60 around some natural hot springs, then over the ensuing centuries rebuilt & remodelled & expanded. In the 18^th Century Bath was very fashionable & now over 4 million tourists visit every year (only to see not to bath, in fact you are warned not to touch the water because it is toxic). The Roman Bathhouse Museum is very interesting & informative, we are given audio guides & walk ourselves around the bath house complex & view everything at our own pace. The Roman engineers were amazing, the ability to tap the hot spring then build all manner of bathing areas with different degrees of heat, having lead piping, overflow drainage, the ability to drain the baths for cleaning, the structural design. It really is something to see. Needless to say we spent a fair bit of time inside reading the different informative signs, looking at the displays & listening to the audio guides at the appropriate points. We can’t seem to get away from Japanese brides, there was one down in the main bathhouse having wedding photographs taken. Also on display were Roman artefacts recovered from the spring, plenty of coins, some curse plate & amazingly, a bronze safety pin. Yes, the Romans had safety pins 2,000 years ago. When you see how advanced these people were you question –   all these years later how much have we progressed?

After the Roman baths we walked along the high street & up to the area of town known as the Circus, a circular row of stately Georgian houses, this is the expensive part of town. The houses do look good. In a nearby real estate agent’s window we saw one of these places up for sale for a mere 2,995,000 pounds. We then walked a little further uphill to the Royal Crescent, more Georgian houses in a crescent formation & this is the very expensive part of town with good elevated views over the Somerset countryside. We did like the new black Ferrari parked outside one of the houses. Ron said the reason he doesn’t want one is because he cannot get in & out of low cars anymore. (ha, ha not because of the price tag), We walked back to the main part of town & have a look along the Avon River at the Pulteney Bridge, a covered bridge that was built around 1770 & used as a shopping arcade as well as a means to cross the river. It looks very similar to the Rialto Bridge in Venice & the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.

Our next stop is Glastonbury, famous in more recent times for the large music festival of the same name, but famous in the past for the Abbey that was founded in the 7^th Century. The Abbey is now a ruin but was once the richest in all of England with vast estates. The last abbot was hanged, drawn & quartered in 1539 on Glastonbury Tor overlooking the Abbey by King Henry 8^th because he would not change from Catholic religion to the new Anglican faith. The town now is full of alternative lifestyle shops & people, with every shop having some form of crystal, incense, magic, alternative/hippie/goth clothing. Some of the people working the streets appear unusual & there is the smell of more than incense in the air. Lots of tourists stop in this bohemian town just to see something that is so unconventional. We looked around for about an hour, it is only a small town, before we were on the bus again.

More countryside with stone fences, sheep, wheat & some corn before we get to our hotel near Saltash & close to Plymouth. Our hotel is on a golf course & our room looks out over the fairways. We had a short time to unpack, change & get ready for our dinner, then a half hour drive up into Dartmoor & The Skylark Inn in the small village of Clearbrook, an old pub built in 1735 & originally a whisky house that traded with the tin miners in the area (the inn is heritage listed & it must always remain a pub). Dinner was superb, the Guinness pie was a standout, everyone enjoyed it & the pint of Guinness washing it down was also very good. The atmosphere in the pub is great, small, low exposed beams on the ceilings. Victor & his family running the place very nice & friendly. As we were leaving the fog & Irish mist (light rain, maybe it is English mist now) closed in & visibility was reduced considerably. It is easy to imagine the hound of the Baskervilles bounding along the Dartmoor. Yesterday’s beautiful summers day fooled us, today was an overcast misty day but not cold perhaps we are getting acclimatised. Another great day.