May 28th -Recce of Bath, Canal discovery

Our first full day in Bath. 

We wandered through the Henrietta Gardens (very near where we are staying) and admired the fountain, pond and unusual flowers.

We walked past Laura Place with its cute fountain

 and started our impromptu self guided tour of Bath.  We were loosely following a map in one of the books in our holiday place

by walking down the stairs on the far left of the picture below.

This is what we actually did...

  Believe it or not- this is the Pulteney Bridge (which has shops on both sides of it so you cannot see the water)

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picture from the water side of the bridge so that you can see the shop windows looking out over the water. 

 We followed along the footbath by the river for a bit and then walked up some stairs inside the pillar (you can just see the arch on the far left that you have to turn before)  up on to the bridge shown below.  Please excuse the strange colours - I accidentally applied a retro filter to the camera.

Just after the bridge you could look down into the Parade Gardens with this cute bandstand.

I liked the musical notations on the bandstand surround. 

 We had to walk past Sally Lunn's place (the oldest shop in Bath) but we didn't stop there to eat.

 We walked past the Roman bath but didn't stop to look as we didn't have Thom with us.

 The Abbey comes off of the same square.

 We walked up a number of streets with rows of Georgian mansions lining them on both sides.  Initially these were all holiday houses for society visitors.

The Circus has three curved rows of houses (30 in all from groups of 10, 12 and 8 houses) with roads dividing them and a lovely park in the centre which now has large trees growing in it. There are 5 levels on each house - ground floor is below the ground level (at the original ground level) , with first floor at the level of the street. Servants would initially have been in the very top and bottom of the houses with the masters sandwiched between. These , as many of the Georgian houses were designed by John Wood and his son (also John Wood) in a special Palladian style- following strict rules to ensure that they appeared pleasant to the eye and were attractive to the gentry.

lovely carvings above the first floor level

the lower (ground) level 

 We continued around a little to the Royal Crescent.  A semi- circle of 30 houses. Very posh, with a private lawn out the front.

we were quite impressed by the fig tree trained to grow on this section 

 We continued on our way, heading back towards the centre of town via Royal Victoria Park.

excellent climbing tree

 We stopped for icecream and found some available for dogs!!

We shopped on the way home for the ingredients for tea (including some wine) , except we forgot the basil.

We were home for a bit of R and R before we decided it was just about tea time and Trev and I went out to find basil if possible. We took a more adventurous and interesting way to the closest shop, bought the last pack of basil available and decided to have a bit of a look at the canal area on the other side of the supermarket.  

 The water was very still, creating wonderful reflections, and we discovered that there is a series of stepped locks leading down to the river.  We took a bit of a stroll along the path, and stopped to watch a boat making its way up through the lock.

This old chimney used to be part  of the system that pumped water up to the top level of the canal again, but this was stopped many years ago, so the old, ornate chimney stands quietly and watches the passing foot and canal traffic.

Trev and I decided we had better get home soon, so we walked on home with our shopping, with only one bit of false start, when we came to a dead end behind some apartments. It was a bit late for tea, but it was fun to discover a hidden treasure of Bath.

27th May - Waterstones, Avebury and Bath

Today was a moving day.  

The morning was spent in Oxford just tidying up a few things and getting ready for going away. 

Ben had a chance to try his best coffee in Oxford yet (Ratio in George Street).  I was left at the Waterstones book shop to have a bit of a look at the kids section while Thom nipped back to Brasenose to pick up a few games we might want to play while we were away. 

Waterstones

 When he got back I still hadn't made it to the kids section!!! - another great bookstore in Oxford.  

He did come to the kids section with me and wait while I enjoyed some great books and the general vibe of the place.  "Oi Dog" is one of his current favourites. I agree - it is good fun. 

How do you drive from Oxford to Bath in an interesting way?  You drive past Avebury and see some stone circles.  So that is what we did.  On a bank holiday in wonderful weather we were lucky to find a park in the overflow parking.  (and lucky to find any lunch at 2pm )

The Avebury site is a world heritage site.  Built about 1200BC the large Henge (ditch) surrounds the entire village and three stone circles.  Apparently it is one of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain.  We had never heard of it. 

Aerial view of the town showing the ditch and some of the stones. 

We wandered among the old stones and marvelled at the history (along with many others)

There were ribbons hanging in these trees which represent prayers to the spirits in the area.

 The area did feel ancient and special.

We drove on towards Bath and finally found our home for the next few days after a bit of searching.
The house is in the centre of a block , entered via a lane.  We are happy to have 4 bedrooms and to be able to spread out a little.  We are close to Henrietta Gardens and only about 1.5km from the centre of Bath. 

Trevor and I went for a walk once we were settled in , and located a  small supermarket, where we purchased the makings for dinner. One the way we discovered this pretty roundabout with multicoloured flowers and an attractive sculpture.

The evening finished when I finally managed to dominate in a game of Innovation and put us all out of our misery. We won't be asking to play this strategy game again in any hurry and still feel that we have no idea of what on earth it is about.We sure felt old and stupid as we headed for bed after that effort. 

26th May Oxford - History of Science, Blackwells Books and Pizza

Trevor and I had breakfast at the Tick Tock cafe near where we were staying , before heading on in to town to meet up with the others.

It was great to just arrive and be lazy together.
Eventually we pulled together a plan of sorts for the day and headed off to see some essentials of Oxford.

The first stop was Blackwells Books.  Blackwells is an institution in Oxford, having started in 1879 with a 12 foot square space. It has slowly increased its footprint and its reputation with institutions across the world,  and now surrounds the White horse Inn on three sides, taking up a considerable size area held together in a rabbit warren of rooms over various levels of shop and various specialities.

In 1966 the Norrington room was created. You enter what looks like a small shop on Broad street and work your way towards the back corner.   When you find the Norrington room you gasp in amazement. This room is HUGE!!!  It contains two and a half miles of book shelf and over 160,000 books. At the time of building it was the largest bespoke built bookroom in the world. It was built in partnership with Trinity College, who were excavating at the time.  The room was called the Norrington room after the President of Trinity at the time.

What a pleasure to see it and to browse in it.  A few more weeks to browse it it would not go astray.

Author talk in progress

looking across the room

 Next stop was the History of Science Museum, where we enjoyed marvelling at such things as Einstein's blackboard  (notes preserved on a blackboard from his visiting lecture on the expansion of the universe  in May 1939)

We saw lots of amazing metal instruments for measuring and studying the planets and time, and for navigating.

This is one of only two surviving examples of an equatorium in the world.

A chinese fire clock.  Threads are slowly burnt, allowing bronze balls to drop - which marks the passing of time. 

a fairly unimpressive entrance to a very interesting place. 

 Then we moved on to the Weston Library, where we first visited the small exhibition about the stone heads at the Sheldonian theatre.  The thirteen stone heads (seen below) stand on pillars facing the street and have been replaced twice due to erosion. They were first commissioned by Christopher Wren in the 1600s, and are thought to represent Roman emperors.  Oxford are currently searching for the old ones which were replaced, as no record was kept of them.  They have some photos of found ones - which look very sad and sorry for themselves parked in yards and woodland around the place.  Some are almost unrecognisable as heads at all.  The most recent replacement work was done in 1972 after two years of work by sculptor Michael Black.

The Weston also had an exhibition about 3D representation , showing how various artists have tried to represent 3D over the years . This included some amazing multi layer depictions of the human body, some 3D shapes made from folded paper which pop up out the pages of books, and also some original drawings by Leonardo himself! 

Also not to be missed at the Weston is their display of the Sheldon tapestry which has been preserved (well, parts of it have). This amazing 4 map series was commissioned  in the 1590s and shows maps of  Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire woven in wool and silk. 

This one has lost parts to moths, but is really beautiful and quite remarkable. It is not only a beautiful weaving but shows the stage of Cartography that was occuring at the time also.  It still covers a large portion of wall despite the bits missing. Each was about 6m x4m in size originally. 

By the time we had seen all these amazing things we were very tired, so we took ourselves home to Thom and Laura's place again and nestled in to eat delicious pizza and chat until bedtime (slightly earlier than the previous night) while continuing to drink many cups of tea.