Taking the waters

20011125_Bath_general

took the BBC at its word today, and assumed that a weather forecast of "bright" meant "occasional glimpses of sunshine filtered through clouds and no actual precipitation". Never mind the Eskimos and their words for snow, the English have a thousand euphemisms for cloudy with intermittent rain.
Anyway, "bright" was optimistic enough to pack the Hasselblad and head for Bath. I attempted to catch a train, failing to allow for British Rail. Eventually, I caught a "rail substitution bus", which, "owing to the engineering" in the words of Clive James, had replaced the train between Bristol Temple Meads and Bath Spa for the day.
You will have to wait for the artistic shots until I find a dinosaur who develops real film, but in the meantime, here are some happy snaps of what is arguably the loveliest town I have ever visited.

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It certainly ranks well up there with the Old Towns of Stockholm, Prague, Warsaw and Brussels, without feeling like a museum piece. Contemporary Bath is predominantly Georgian in style, and therefore frozen at about 1825. The town centre has a graceful, coherent feel, and seems to escaped the worst insults of post-war reconstruction.
Bath is another stop on the World Heritage checklist. According to the City of Bath World Heritage Site Management Plan, people have been living in Bath and enjoying the hot springs since at least 5000BC. The Roman Baths are a wonderful palimpsest of Roman, Georgian and Victorian layers. Oddly, I found one of the most interesting things was observing all the other gawkers enjoying their World Heritage.

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After I visited the Baths I paid a brief visit to Bath Abbey. Not greatly memorable, but some lovely examples of funerary art on the walls. One of these days I will read up on Victorian funerary allegory, because there were a few recurring themes, such as the Good Samaritan, wreaths, animals and broken colums that would be interesting to understand further.