Friday, 23rd May Bath

Robyn writes: The rainiest day we've seen so far! Considering the weather forecast was for 20% chance of rain this morning, we'd actually had hopes of seeing some of the lovely parkland around the city - Prior Park, which is up on a hill and would have meant a bus ride to get to, or two of the inner city parks which look nice. However, when we set out just after 10, it was raining quite persistently, and rather cold with it! Unlike other rainy days we've had, it didn't quickly blow through, and has spent most of the day either being drizzly or rainy. Finally the money we spent on our new raincoats in Newquay last week seems absolutely justified!

All thoughts of parks gone from our heads, we made instead for the Bath Art Gallery (warm, dry and free - hard to beat!) As this year marks the bicentenary of the death of Captain Arthur Phillip, Australia's first Governor, they have the classic portrait of him here on loan from the National Portrait Gallery for the year, so it was good to see that "in person", as it were. They had lots of other interesting pictures, some from quite famous artists such as Gainsborough and Sickert, so we had an enjoyable time looking at the gallery.

 

This photo is taken on the Pulteney River Bridge (covered with shops) looking towards the Art Gallery



It was still raining so we decided to look for somewhere to have morning tea - it having occured to us that we hadn't yet tried the famous Bath Bun! We found a lovely little tea house called just that; The Bath Bun, so both ordered tea and buns. The buns are a rich, light, sweet texture with crunchy sugar in the bottom of the bun and more crunchy sugar sprinkled on top with currants. They're served with butter and they were yummy! (Sorry, degenerating into a foodie's jaunt again....)

 Tea and buns in Bath



Charming view from our tea house window

We plunged out into the rain once more with an important mission: to search out the necessary beer shirts for Mark and Meggsy! For those who haven't heard the story, over the last few years it has become the custom when the Hayeses, Cuskellys or Merrigans leave Australia that the menfolk have to bring back 3 matching beer t-shirts from their travels. They are all gaining an impressive collection of these and before we left, Meggsy and Mark impressed on us the seriousness of continuing this tradition. England thus far had proved less than satisfactory in the provision of beer shirts, but today the good folk at Bath Ales have come up trumps! We finally found their big outlet - "Graze" bar, restaurant and microbrewery near the railway station, but disaster struck when they only had two shirts left. A quick phone call from the manager to the nearest outlet found the three shirts in the sizes we needed and we set out to find "The Salamander". All of this involved lots of wandering through areas of Bath I hadn't yet seen so it was very interesting (and not too cold or rainy by this stage). Having found The Salamander and Ollie the bartender, we obtained the shirts and bore them off in triumph.

After a bit more wandering and looking at the sights, we ended up back at Graze, where we showed our appreciation by having lunch and Lex of course tried some of the famous Bath Ale. He can recommend "the Dark Side"!

 Lex goes over to "The Dark Side".

Note new t-shirt. No, we don't know why their logo is a bunny!

Impressive microbrewery

By then it was nearly 3 and we realised that we had to head home to pack and wash (our next holiday home apparently doesn't have a washing machine), so we visited M&S in search of an easy meal for tonight, and made our way home. So far neither of us has shown any enthusiasm for packing, but I daresay it'll get done eventually! At least the rain seems to have stopped for the time being, so fingers crossed for a relatively fine day to travel to Cardiff tomorrow. (Mind you, having looked at the weather forecast, I don't know that we'll get it...)