It’s been a bad night’s sleep. Rich has had an angioneurotic reaction overnight and has widespread facial swelling. By the morning and after some anti-histamines, it’s starting to settle thankfully but we’ve little idea what caused it. It’s business as usual, however, as Rich makes breakfast today.
We spend the remainder of the morning doing our familiar rest day chores: washing, sorting and doing general physical maixtenance, such as nail cutting. We have coffee and a cake in Dexter’s cafe downstairs while we wait for the washing machine to finish, then head off into town to catch the TOOTBus open top tourist bus.
This is very informative, telling us about Beau Nash who popularised Bath as the tourist destination for the season in Georgian times and also about the florid Palladian style promulgated by John Wood and his son. Interestingly, John Wood the Elder was born in Tiverton, our final destination for this section of the walk.
The Palladian Way ends here in Bath and, whatever paucity of homages to Andrea Palladio along the way, there are certainly plenty in Bath. What is interesting is that behind the grand frontages, there is often a higgledy -piggledy mess of a building behind. This is described demurely in the commentary as ‘Queen Anne at the front and Sally Anne at the back’, more commonly known as all fur coat and no knickers. Anyone acquainted with the home of the Royal College of Surgeons of England prior to its recent rebuild will know exactly what this means (the College was originally built by George Dance the Younger who also designed most of the Theatre Royal in Bath).
We hop off the bus and stop for lunch at the Portofino restaurant prior to a mosey around the Royal Crescent. It’s £775,000 for a 2/3 bedroom flat here, as we discover in an estate agent’s window on the way. Thomas and I decide to visit the Royal Crescent Museum, but Rich settles down in the park for a rest instead.
We meet up again, heading back into the centre of the city for a visit to Bath Abbey. Unfortunately, we can’t climb the tower as it’s Sunday and so there’s bell-ringing. Something to come back to this lovely city to do. In the abbey, I spot a pelican carving in the vaulted ceiling. This is the symbol of the founder of my alma mater, Oxford’s Corpus Christi College, and sure enough Richard Foxe was once the bishop of Bath and Wells, though he never actually visited here! There are also several wealthy people buried and commemorated here who often came from miles away (Ireland, Barbados, Norfolk). I can only assume that they were ill and came to take the waters here, but with no success.
We buy a gelato then wander back towards our apartment, stopping by Bath cricket ground to watch a few engrossing overs and the fall of a couple of wickets. There’s some final sorting to do then it will be dinner and sleep, and back on the road again tomorrow.
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