A weekend adventure to Bath and beyond ...

Dan had the weekend off and it timed nicely with my birthday so we decided Bath and Stonehenge would be great places to visit and celebrate. We headed across the big bridge and back into England.

We started our visit in the Abby, it was very beautiful and we were excited to find Dan and Hannah's favourite instrument ... look how excited they are. 

The roof was as beautiful as St George's at Windsor. The stained glass was lovely but there was some restoration work going on so we couldn't see all of it. We decided not to do the tower tour as we had limited time and it was very grey and rainy so we didn't think the view would be much.

Our next stop was the Roman Baths. We audio toured up and made our way around the museum part. It explains the history of the area and the development and use of the Baths. There are a few digital parts play with actors doing what people would have done when the baths were operating. It made it easy to picture things. 

It was quite a large area with a temple as well as baths. And you didn't come for a quick dip, people would come and spend a good amount of time getting clean. Mens and women's areas were separate. A large range of society would use the baths so it didn't seem to matter if you were super rich, middle class or poor. The Roman's believed cleanliness was next to godliness really and these baths were the action of that belief. 

A reconstruction of what would have been the entrance. Apparently, they used really bright colours in all their paintings.

You can see the hot water moving through in the background.

An altar. 

The screen shows you what it would have looked like, you can see the base of the columns.

A head from a statue.

 Where the hot water flows from into the bath.

We found a Roman soldier and he gave us some lessons on how to be big, strong soldiers. 

Asher listened to E V E R Y T H I N G ... again. 

At the end of the tour, you can taste the water. Apparently, it has healing properties. It does have a bunch of minerals in it but it tasted pretty bad. 

We headed back out into the rain for some pics. This one has the Abby behind us. 

This one is the Bath behind us. 

We found the architecture to be amazing. Look at all the columns and style. Incredible.

Dan found a really great cafe where we could eat, have hot chocs/coffee and watch the rain. There seemed to be a lot of it.

It was also the Jane Austin Festival so there was a bit happening around the place. We saw many people dressed up in the clothing of Jane's time. It was like seeing Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett everywhere. 

With that in mind, we headed to the Jane Austin museum. (I'm supposed to be pointing to Jane, but didn't quite get it right).

We had a tour guide who took us through some of Jane's history. We watched a video that took us through Jane's life in Bath and the surrounding areas. It was narrated by Mr Wickham, though he didn't seem to be very wicked.

There were a few interactive parts, so we tried our hands at writing with quills. The kids found this really hard, Asher, in particular, being left-handed. I impressed them both with my great skill (Actually!). "Mum, your really good at this?!" incredulous voices stated while watching me write a note. Ah, the joy of your children discovering you're actually good at something. However, I must admit failure to a couple of toys that were there. I could not get the little ball onto the wooden handle. 

We did get dressed up too, but Asher took the photos as he refused to play the game. Booo!

The museum has a new wax statue of Jane. This is said to be the most like her, more than what is on the new 10-pound note. 

After that, we wandered through the streets to the Fashion Museum. There were clothes from hundreds of years ago till quite recently. No photos were taken until we got to the dress up area. 

Don't they all look dashing? 

A lady got really enthusiastic about styling Asher. And he let her! Mr Darcy eat your heart out.

We were pretty tired by this stage so we took a drive around town. Found the really fancy area, where there were many expensive cars. Asher kept spluttering as we passed them all and then spouted lots of facts. The rest of us just looked. Sadly no photos on the phones, but this is what it looks like thanks to Google. Though you need to imagine grey and lots of rain. 

We then headed to our accommodation in a small town of Lacock. It is a really special town, but more about that in the next blog. 

Dan found some reading material to enjoy. 

After dinner, Dan and I went for a very short drive into town to find a pub. The first one we tried was more of a dinner one but the girl working was lovely and recommended The George so we headed there. It was pretty old but cool pub and we found some pictures of people we knew off doing some filming for some movies we knew. We also heard all about the Downton Abby movie that was going to be filmed from Monday there. E X C I T I N G !

It was a lovely time and a great day.