2018-04 - Bath (UK)

The Avo sandwich at the Italian Gardens Cafe

What a difference a full night of sleep can make! We started this morning with a leisurely jog around Hyde Park. We saw several other runners but mostly pedestrians and many bicycle commuters. Afterward, we enjoyed breakfast inside the park at The Italian Gardens Cafe. I tried "The Avo", which is an avocado smashed on top of a large piece of sourdough bread, crowned with a poached egg with the orangest egg yolk I've ever seen. The side salad was rocket (arugula).

Before heading out to Bath today, we made a few quick stops, exchanging money and hitting up a pharmacy, which especially looked very old and well-used on the outside but clean, bright and well-organized on the inside.

Passing Swindon Station. Check out all the bikes on the racks.

Our walk back to Paddington Station was much quicker today. We arrived at 11:25, got our train tickets validated and just made it on the 11:30 train before it pulled out. Over the 1.5 hour ride to Bath, we passed by the towns of Chippenham and Swindon. For those who elect to take the train, you will need your ticket handy when you exit your arrival station in order to get out of the building.

Our AirBnB was a short walk from the train station. It's an amazing five-story, 250+ year home that runs all of it's radiators from a Nest thermostat. Plus, it's a short walk to the main attraction of this city, the Roman Baths!

Looking down on the Roman bath from the Victorian built terrace

On a Monday in April around 2 pm, there are no lines to get into the Roman Baths. We walked right in and purchased combo tickets for the Roman Baths and for the Fashion Museum (for those Jane Austen enthusiasts). The museum provides audio guides to everyone, in multiple languages for no additional charge. In English, there was even an option to listen to Bill Bryson's musings on the baths. While there weren't any lines, there were many people visiting the museum. It's a one way path through the museum with large arrows marking the flow.

The sculptures on the terrace above the Roman Bath

We began by walking around the terrace that had been built around the baths when they had been re-discovered in the 1800s. At that time, homeowners were complaining that there was hot water pooling in their cellars. Upon investigation, the authorities decided to purchase all of the homes over the bath and restore the baths.  On the terrace, the Scottish sculptor G.A. Lawrence recreated Roman era sculptures, including one of Julius Caesar (which has subsequently been replaced due to accidentally toppling into the baths in the 1980s).

Following the arrows, we learned about the source of the springs (vents deep inside the earth), how hot the water is (not boiling -- only 46 C / 115 F) and why the green color (algae).

Originally, these springs were discovered by the Celtic or Briton (depending on what you read) Prince Bladud who was banished from his father's kingdom when he contracted leprosy. Banished to the middle of nowhere marsh to raise pigs, he made the serendipitous discovery of the hot spring, which he bathed in and miraculously recovered from his disease.

At the main bath level

When the Romans invaded in 43 AD, the Dobboni people lived by the Sacred Spring, worshiping the goddess Sulis, of healing. The Romans quickly took over the area and were beginning to build structures here the year after, dedicated the goddess that they were now calling Sulis Minerva, a combination of the Dobboni goddess and the Roman goddess Minerva.

Lead curses inscribed in Latin recovered from the Sacred Spring

Curse transcriptions

At each level, there are videos of people dressed in Roman era dress performing their assumed normal daily routines. We circled downward in the museum, looking at artifacts along the way. There was even a full skeleton of a man buried in a lead lined coffin. He was from Syria. Lead appeared to be a favorite material of the Romans: even the curses that people wrote to the goddesses were inscribed in lead and thrown into the sacred spring.

Gemstones with intricate inscriptions used as wax signet rings

At the level just before exiting to the original Roman era pool, there are pulleys demonstrating how the Romans lifted the stones for the bath, a variety of bricks used within the bath and a collection of petite gems with intricate designs that could have been part of signet rings for sealing documents with wax.

Tepidarium with video holograph recreation of Roman bathers

We stepped out to the main pool and the tour meet-up point. Each hour, there is a docent led tour through the main and east baths. It is completely worth it! The tour guide took us through the three rooms on the East Bath, which are thought to have been for the women. The first room is the apodyterium, or changing room, where the bathers left their clothes. The second room was the tepidarium, where oils were rubbed on the bathers and all their hair was plucked. The third room was the caldarium, or sauna, were the bathers sweated out the oils. The room was heated by fires built at the corners of the room underneath the floor. The heat of the fires spread in between the stacks of bricks holding up the floor and heated the entire room. Only after the bathers passed through all of the rooms were they finally allowed to bath in the hot spring bath.

Lead pipe around the Roman bath

As our tour guide walked us out of the East Bath and back to the main bath area, she pointed out a portion of lead pipe still lying in the drain. She said that while the Romans knew that lead was bad for them, they continued to use it for plumbing, since it was such an ideal material for pipes. The pipe today is actually shorter than when originally rediscovered in the 1800s since people would snip off bits to sell.

After the entire, wonderful Roman bath experience, we were hungry! We stopped over at The Cornish Bakery and discovered delicious pastries. My recommendation is the chocolate torsade, a twist of croissant pastry dough with chocolate and sugar, suffused in powdered sugar. We ate our snacks as we walked the five minutes over to the Art Gallery.

Inside the gallery, the Bath Society of Artists Annual Exhibition is going on. The walls of the room are lined floor to ceiling with a variety of artworks by local artists. We were even given voting cards to vote for our favorite piece in the room. Upstairs, there is a room dedicated to pottery and china ware and a larger room of all the different art pieces that have been donated to the gallery over the years. The one piece I recognized was a 16th century recreation of Hans Holbein's King Henry VIII, which is just inside the door to the right.