September 12, 2013: Bristol to Haltwhistle; A Walk Around Haltwhistle
	September 9-10, 2013: Traveling from Dallas to Bristol, England
	Return to the Index for Our British Isles Trip

Nancy has bought some walking shoes, since the ones she brought are in her luggage which hasn't been delivered yet (although the website now says that it has been located and is on its way to Heathrow) and today we are going to take the train from Bristol down to Bath, England, to have a walk around that town and visit both its famous Abbey and its ancient Roman baths.

We delayed our departure to the train station for a while so that Ron could get a haircut and shave at a quaint local barber shop just up the street from our hotel. Fred went with him, and captured not only the picture of Ron Ruckman at the shop, but also a hanging basket along that same street. (They also went into a bakery, where Ron got one of the cupcakes on display in a bakery nearby.

Nancy also wanted to take some time before heading to Bath to see if she could find an antique ring in one of the shops near the Avon Gorge Hotel, so we walked up that way, passing the odd vehicle that we had seen before, and what looked like an old garage. I am pretty sure it wasn't still a garage, mostly because the phone numbers here in Bristol are now longer than four digits. When we got to the antique place, we went inside the store while Nancy did her looking around. I think she did buy a ring there before we walked up to the bus stop at the top of the street to catch a bus to the train station.

Our Trip to Bath

At the bus stop on Princes Street, we waited for a "Route 9" bus that the hotel clerks said would terminate at the train station. One came along presently, and the seven of us got on the bus for the ride over to the station. The ride took about twenty minutes as the bus wound through the downtown area; Fred took a picture of some typical buildings along the way before the bus pulled into the central train station.

I actually thought that the Bristol main station was very interesting architecturally; it was either a repurposed very old building, or built intentionally to look like a medieval castle (although I doubt that medieval castles had pretty hanging baskets outside). Inside, the station looked like the interior of a castle or a church, with graceful peaked archways holding up high ceilings. It was really very interesting.

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Out on the train platform, things looked more normal. As we waited, a freight train came rolling through, and I thought it was interesting enough to make a movie of; you can use the player at left to watch it. The platform was covered with a high lattice ceiling, and it presented what I thought was a striking appearance; you can see it here.

As we were waiting, Fred and I took some additional pictures here on the platform, and you can use the clickable thumbnails below to have a look at them:

Our train arrived after a few minutes, we boarded, and the train headed off to Bath.

Like all the trains we were to take in England, the train to Bath was spacious, comfortable and punctual. For a single person or a couple, the cost was probably less than driving, although if we had a van already, the seven of us could have driven more cheaply than taking the train, but the train certainly was convenient. Along the way and on the train, Fred took some good pictures of our group and the countryside (like my picture of the countryside at right), and I have put clickable thumbnails for some of these pictures below:

The trip took about forty-five minutes, and we got off at the Bath train station, which was just at the edge of the central area of town, and just an easy walk from everything we wanted to see. Once we left the station, though, it took us a little time to get our bearings before we headed off to Bath Abbey.

Walking Into the Town of Bath

Once we got oriented on the little tourist map I'd picked up at the train station, we headed off from the station on a four-block walk to the Abbey and the Roman Baths.

The Bath Abbey, once a Catholic Cathedral, is now an Anglican Church; it was transferred to the Crown during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. On the way to the Abbey, we passed what is currently Bath's Catholic Cathedral, and quite nearby to that church was the Minter Street Baptist Church.

Our walk was fairly leisurely, as we stopped to peer into shop windows and look at our surroundings. So we had ample time to take a few pictures along the way, and there are clickable thumbnails for these below:

After a twenty-minute walk, we arrived at square just south of the Abbey, between it and the Roman Baths, and were ready to go inside the Abbey and have a look.

The Bath Abbey

Pilgrims and visitors have been coming to Bath Abbey for hundreds of years. It is one of the most visited places in the South West of England, and almost a half-million people come through its doors each year- not counting regular parishioners. I am sure that every visitor comes with their own expectations, beliefs and purpose which, I am sure, mirror own own- admiring the magnificent architecture, enjoying the choral music at the services and other times or just to experience a quiet moment of contemplation. Though we did not hear a choral performance, we certainly found the architecture quite wonderful and the environment, even taking all the tourists into account, inspirational.

From the square on the south side of the Abbey and from the broad plaza to the west in front of it, Guy, Fred and I got a number of good pictures of the classic Gothic building. It is one of the handsomest churches I have ever seen, even though not the largest or most ornate. It rivalled those we saw on our Mediterranean cruise and time in Italy last year. Below are clickable thumbnails for some of these views:

There has been a place of Christian worship on this site for well over a thousand years. However, the Abbey has undergone many transformations and changes during this time, and much like the city of Bath has experienced rise and falls in fortune, survived a number of major conflicts, architectural and religious reforms, and two World Wars, but still stands proudly today as an essential place for both worshippers and visitors.

In looking into the history of the Abbey, there is a great deal to discover, and I encourage you to visit their website to learn more. On that website's history pages, I found five things that everyone should know about the history of the Abbey:

Since 757 AD, three different churches have occupied the site of today’s Abbey: an Anglo-Saxon Abbey Church (757-1066), pulled down by the Norman conquerors of England; a massive Norman cathedral begun about 1090, which lay in ruins by late 15th century; and the present Abbey Church founded in 1499 but incomplete until 1611. In 973 King Edgar was crowned King of all England in the Anglo-Saxon Abbey Church (as shown above). The service set the precedent for the coronation of all future Kings and Queens of England including Elizabeth II. The present Abbey Church was founded in 1499 when the newly appointed, Bishop of Bath, Oliver King, is said to have a dream of angels ascending and descending into heaven, which inspired him to build a new Abbey church – the last great medieval cathedral to have been built in England. After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 by order of King Henry VIII, the Abbey lay in ruins for more than 70 years. It wasn’t until 1616, that much of the building we see today was repaired and in use as a parish church and over two hundred years later, in the 1830s, that local architect George Manners added new pinnacles and flying buttresses to the exterior and inside, built a new organ on a screen over the crossing, more galleries over the choir and installed extra seating. The Abbey as we know it is the work of Sir George Gilbert Scott, who from 1864 to 1874, completely transformed the inside of the Abbey to conform with his vision of Victorian Gothic architecture. His most significant contribution must surely be the replacement of the ancient wooden ceiling over the nave with the spectacular stone fan vaulting we see today.

Fred got some particularly good shots of the Abbey from the south side and from the front, concentrating on the sculpted figures on the pediments on either side of the front stained-glass window. You can have a look at these pictures using the clickable thumbnails at right.

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We all went into the Abbey to have a look around, and one of the first things I did was to make a movie looking all around the inside of the Abbey. You can use the player at left to watch that movie.

Then I noticed that there was a tour group of some kind gathered by the back wall of the Abbey, and I discovered that it was one of th hourly tours that climbs the bell tower, which was something we wanted to do. So Guy and I made a detour into the gift shop to find out about these tours.

We found that while entry to the Abbey was free, the tours up the bell tower were not, so we took a look at the upcoming tour schedule to see when we might schedule everyone. Considering that the next available time was two o'clock and that it was now just after twelve, we though tthat the best thing to do was to buy tickets for the four o'clock tour; this would give us time to tour the inside of the Abbey, have lunch and also go through the Roman Baths. So that was the plan, and I went in the gift shop with Guy to buy those tickets for later. Then we all went into the Abbey itself to look around.

The nave of the Bath Abbey was pretty amazing, certainly one of the most beautiful we have seen in some time. Based on a traditional plan, there were two rows of pews in the central aisle, and additional rows in the side aisles. Up towards the altar, there were facing pews, presumably for the choir, as well as the raised platforms from which the sermons would be delivered. The Abbey had a beautiful pipe organ, and at the front and back ends of the nave were beautiful stained-glass windows. All the columns and arches were in the traditional Gothic style, and were quite graceful and beautiful.

Guy took a really excellent picture of the nave; that's the one you can see at left. Fred and I took our own pictures as well, and you can use the clickable thumbnails below to have a look at these:

Just inside the entrance to the Abbey was what I thought was a very interesting informational sign all about the renovation of the Abbey interior that began in 1833. I stopped to read most of it, and you may be interested to read it as well. I have put it into a scrollable window below so you can pan back and forth and up and down to read it:

One really beautiful feature of the Bath Abbey was the extensive use of stained glass. There were large individual panels at the front and back of the nave and also at either end of the side transcept.

Fred used his closeup to get really good pictures of much of this stained-glass, such as the window at the end of the south trancept shown here. Not all the glass was colored; at the end of the nave opposite the altar, there were intricate carved openings with clear glass in them, although that glass was divided into a number of individual shapes. You can see what I mean here. Below are clickable thumbnails for some of the other pictures we all took of the beautiful stained-glass in Bath Abbey:

Thousands of people have been buried in the Abbey over the centuries, and many of them are commemorated by the beautiful memorial stones which dominate the interior of the Abbey. The wall memorials have frequently been moved around in the Abbey; so that an individual stone may not be near the spot where a person was buried. Sadly, some of the stones which are recorded in early lists of memorials have been lost, probably during the ‘restorations’ which took place in the 19th century.

Until then most of the memorials were fixed rather haphazardly to the nave pillars (such as the one shown at right); however, Gilbert Scott took the opportunity during his great restoration of the 1860s to move them back to the main walls where they can be seen today. He also lifted the ledger stones in the floor in order to put in a central heating system, but relaid many of these in different positions. If you look closely around the South Transept you will see that some ledger stones have even been chopped in half to make them fit the available space.

Not everyone commemorated on a memorial stone was actually buried in the Abbey. Many people came to Bath to take the waters for their health and died in the city; and it was not uncommon for a service to be held for them in the Abbey, after which the body would be taken back to their home for burial.

Many of the ledger stones in the floor are hidden by the pews, or are so worn that they cannot be deciphered. Fortunately, a record was made of all the inscriptions in the 1870s when the present pews were built, so it is possible to check the wording of a particular floor stone even if it is not physically accessible.

Other burials were more notable, and the monuments to them more elaborate. One of the largest inside the Abbey itself is the tomb of James Montagu (d. 1618), Bishop of Bath.

The Abbey has 617 wall memorials and 847 floor stones. Many of these commemorate more than one individual; and often an entire family. There are also a number of war memorial plaques which commemorate soldiers who died in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1841-42), the First World War (1914-18), and the Second World War (1939-45).The earliest memorial is to Richard Chapman, an Alderman of the city; who died 1 May 1572. It can be found in the north choir aisle next to the Alphege Chapel.

The last memorial to be installed in the Abbey is in the north choir aisle and is to Sir Isaac Pitman, who died in 1897. A plaque commemorating the famous inventor of the phonetic alphabet and shorthand system was dedicated in 1958. Not all the memorials are to the ‘Great and the Good’; and you did not have to be rich or from the aristocracy to be commemorated in the Abbey. People from all walks of life are represented - from the Chilton family who were plumbers in Bath in the early 19th century to sugar plantation owners from Jamaica and Barbados. In 1676 the historian Anthony Wood visited the Abbey and reported that the memorial stones in the south aisle floor were already wearing away, due to people using the Abbey as a short cut through to the bowling green at the east end of the church. Below are clickable thumbnails that you can use to see some of our pictures of these memorials and marker stones:

At one end of the north wall of the nave, there were some different kinds of memorials; these were embroidered and in frames and there were perhaps twenty of them. Guy said that this was a current trend when space for carved stones was not available. Many of these were quite pretty, with Bible verses and sayings. Below are clickable thumbnails for the pictures of some of these that I took:

Aside from the pictures I have already included here, Guy and I took quite a few more that show the detail of the various aspects of the interior of Bath Abbey, and you will probably want to look at the best of these; there are clickable thumbnails for them below: We were done inside the Abbey for now, so we left to go across the street to the Roman Baths.   The Roman Baths in Bath, England From Bath Abbey, we walked out of the main door, which is at the west end of the nave, adjacent to the gift shop, and across the narrow pedestrian end of Abbey Street to the Roman Baths. I walked down to York Street, which borders the Baths on the south side, and faced the opening between the Abbey and the Baths that is Abbey Street. Then I used the pan-and-stitch feature on my new little camera to put together a panoramic view. On the right is the Bath Information Center, and to the left of that is the Abbey itself. Then there is the opening for Abbey street and, on the left, the Roman baths. That view is below:

Then I rejoined everyone else outside the front door of the Baths complex; there was a short queue to get inside. I was going to sit down on the ledge while we waited, but I thought better of it. The Roman Baths complex here in Bath is one of the best preserved such sites in the world. This site, which was famous throughout the Roman Empire, has four main features. Three are ancient- the Sacred Spring, the Roman Temple and the Roman Bath House. The fourth is modern- the Museum holding finds from the site. The Roman Baths themselves are below the modern street level; the buildings above street level date from the 19th century.

The first shrine at the site of the hot springs was built by the Celts, sometime around the ninth century BC; legends circulated about the healing powers of the waters. The shrine was dedicated to the goddess Sulis (Roman: Minerva). This name carried forward into the Roman name for the town- Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis"). The Roman temple was constructed in 60-70 AD and the bathing complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years, to include a stable wood-pile foundation, stone chambers, and wooden barrel-vaulted buildings which enclosed a caldarium (hot bath), tepidarium (warm bath), and frigidarium (cold bath). After the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the first decade of the 5th century, these fell into disrepair and were eventually lost due to silting up and flooding. By the 6th century, the complex had fallen into disrepair.

The baths have been modified and redeveloped on several occasions, including the 12th century when John of Tours built a curative bath over the King's Spring reservoir and the 16th century when the city corporation built a new bath (Queen's Bath) to the south of the Spring. The spring is now housed in 18th century buildings, designed by architects John Wood, the Elder and John Wood, the Younger, father and son. Visitors drank the waters in the Grand Pump Room (completed in 1799), a neo-classical salon which remains in use, both for taking the waters and for social functions. The visitor entrance (shown at left) is via an 1897 concert hall by J M Brydon. It is an eastward continuation of the Grand Pump Room. Most other buildings, including the raised balcony around the main pool, date from the mid-1800s.

The water that feeds the baths begins as rain on the nearby Mendip Hills. It percolates down through limestone aquifers to a depth of some ten thousand feet where geothermal energy raises the water temperature to 150-200°F. Under pressure, the heated water rises to the surface along fissures and faults in the limestone. The spring puts out a quarter-million gallons of water every day, and has done so for thousands of years.

When we entered the concert hall, we first passed through an anteroom where a corridor led to the Pump Room Restaurant, and then we entered the concert hall proper. It is no longer used as a concert hall, even though the ornate dome and ceiling still remain. In the center of the room is now the visitor desk where one buys tickets and picks up audio guides. We had to wait in a back-and-forth queue for fifteen minutes or so, and Fred took some pictures of the room in the meantime. There are clickable thumbnails for these below:

We got our tickets and all entered the complex pretty much together. Pretty shortly, Ron Ruckman, who likes to move through places like this quickly, was lost to sight, and the only person I still saw was Fred. I was going slowly, taking lots of pictures, and eventually I lost him, too. As it turned out, when I got to the exit (through a gift shop, naturally) I could not see anyone, and until we reunited for our climb up the Abbey tower, I was on my own.

On the aerial view at right, I've marked the approximate route I (and we) took through the complex. The route began on the 19th-century raised balcony above the main pool, circulated that pool and then went inside to see some of the other pools. Then, we took stairs down to the level of the main pool, around it again, and then into the museum which is on the lower two levels. We followed a circuitous route through the museum, and then exited through the gift shop at the west side of the complex.

Just through the entry doors there was a display with a diagram of the complex. It's a little odd in that North is to the bottom, but I've marked our route on it, too, and you can see that diagram at left. I suppose that the route doesn't really matter much, though, as I'll just organize our pictures in sections for each of the major points of interest and basically in the order that we encountered them.

So we head through the entry doors an out onto the terrace balcony that surrounds the Great Bath.

The Terrace

The Terrace overlooks the Great Bath and is lined with statues of Roman Governors of Britain, Roman Emperors and military leaders. The statues date to 1894, as they were carved by George Anderson Lawton in advance of the grand opening of the Roman Baths in 1897. John McKean Brydon's design of the reception hall was inspired by the grand bath-houses of ancient Rome.

The Roman Baths were not discovered and explored until the late nineteenth century. The view from the Terrace is the first view we had as a visitor to the baths, but what we can see from here is less than a quarter of the site as a whole.

The Roman Baths extend under the modern ground level, beneath the adjacent streets and squares, so many visitors are surprised when they discover just how big the site really is. I was, too, as I had trouble when we were going through the museum, wondering how I could still be under the building we entered through.

Anyway, we are out here on the terrace now, having come out onto it at its northeast corner (that's the Abbey in the background, of course). Looking at the diagram of the sculptures above, you can see that the two sculptures situated there on the east end of the terrace are Julius Caesar and Claudius.

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Even though it has nothing to do with the Roman Baths, I want to include here a movie that I made from the east side of the terrace. Down in the plaza below me and to the east there was someone performing for the lunchtime visitors, and I wanted to capture a bit of that performance. You can see and listen to it as I also pan across Bath Abbey which is just northeast of the baths.

Below are clickable thumbnails for three more pictures that Fred took while standing here on the east side of the terrace:

Moving around to the south side of the terrace, we got a nice view of Bath Abbey just across the plaza.

There are four statues along the south side of the terrace and one more at the southwest corner; you can see them in the picture at right. From foreground to background, they are Vespasian, Ostorius Scapula, Suetonius Paulinus, Julius Agricola and, symbolizing the "spirit of Rome" is the "Head of Roma."

From this side of the terrace, we could also get a good view of the final two statues at the west end of the terrace; these two were (from foreground) the Emperors Hadrian and Constantine the Great. Below are clickable thumbnails for some additional views taken from the south and west sides of the terrace before we headed inside:

When you go inside from the terrace at the northwest corner, there are still windows where you can look back out. Fred took a picture through this window looking towards the southeast corner of the terrace, and for a while I couldn't figure out why there was a pattern in the pool below that seemed to extend right into the museum area at the far end. And then I realized that this must be a reflection of the floor inside. But it is an intriguing picture, and you can see it here.

The Sacred Spring

The Sacred Spring lies at the very heart of the ancient monument. A quarter-million gallons of hot water rises into this pool every day; it was originally within the courtyard of the Temple of Sulis Minerva and the water from it feeds the Roman baths. There is some slight evidence, an earthen bank projecting into the Spring, that suggests it was already a focal point for worship before the Roman Temple and baths were built.

Roman engineers surrounded the Spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead. To provide a stable foundation for this they drove oak piles into the mud. At first this reservoir formed an open pool in a corner of the Temple courtyard but in the second century AD it was enclosed within a barrel vaulted building and columns and statue bases were placed in the Spring itself. Enclosing the Spring in a dimly lit building in this way and erecting statues and columns within it must have enhanced the aura of mystery that surrounded it. Offerings were thrown into the Spring throughout the Roman period.

Eventually the vaulted building collapsed into the Spring itself. We do not know when this was, but it is likely to have been in the sixth or seventh century. The oak piles sunk into the mud two thousand years ago continue to provide a stable foundation for the Roman reservoir walls today.

The view of the Sacred Spring at left was taken from the terrace level. From there, though, the tour path descends a set of stairs to a point where you can get great views of the pool from ground level- like the ones here and here.

At left are clickable thumbnails for three more views of the Sacred Spring from ground level.

The Great Bath

The Great Bath was the centrepiece of the baths here. It was fed with hot water directly from the Sacred Spring and provided an opportunity to enjoy a luxurious warm swim. The bath is lined with 45 thick sheets of lead and is just over five feet deep. Access is by four steep steps that entirely surround the bath.

Fred took the picture at left when he came back out by the Great Bath at ground level. His previous pictures had been inside and, sadly, he didn't change the lighting setting back to 'outdoor.' That's why there is a bluish cast. I would have used one of my own pictures, but I took a different route through the museum first, coming out by the Great Bath towards the end of my tour. At that point, I ran out of battery power, only to discover that the additional ones I had brought were for my older camera! (I had to borrow one of Guy's batteries later in the day when we climbed the Abbey tower.)

On the center of the north side there was originally a fountain feature fed by its own lead pipe from the Sacred Spring. At some point this was replaced with a smaller fountain which is which is what we see today. A large flat slab of stone is set across the point where hot water flows into the bath. It is known today as the diving stone. Niches around the baths would have held benches for bathers and possibly small tables for drinks or snacks.

The bath was originally roofed with a pitched timber construction, but this was replaced in the second century with a much heavier ceramic vault that required strengthened pillars to support it. The result was that the original slender pillars were thickened and projected into the bath itself. This vaulted hall rose to a height of 40 metres. For many Roman visitors this may have been the largest building they had ever entered in their life. To the east and west of the main pool are further suites of baths and heated rooms.

Fred did correct his light setting after a while, so he was able to get some good pictures of the Great Bath from ground level- such as the one at right. Below are clickable thumbnails for some additional views of the Great Bath, taken both from the terrace and from here at ground level:

The Spring Overflow

In the 1st century AD, Roman engineers built a stone-walled reservoir around the Sacred Spring to supply hot water to the baths. The overflow in the picture at left was built into the east wall of the reservoir. This is the point at which hot water that was not required for use in the bathing establishment flowed from the Spring into the great Roman drain. From there it was carried to the River Avon a few hundred metres away.

The water flows through a sluice that could be regulated to completely drain the Sacred Spring and give access to the reservoir chamber for maintenance. The same system devised by Roman engineers continues in use today, nearly two thousand years after it was first built.

The Circular Bath

A cold plunge bath was a feature of many Roman bath houses, but rarely on this scale! Here you could take an invigorating plunge after treatments in the warm and hot rooms – but you probably would not linger!

This bath, which is inside a separate room at the west end of the Great Bath, is 5 feet deep and on one side has an underwater plinth on which a water feature, probably a fountain, once stood.

Apparently, enough tourists think this is a wishing well that there is a fair scattering of coins across the bottom.

The Foundations of the Baths Complex

Part of the tour took us down to the levels below current street level to see some of the original foundations of the bath structures. This was very interesting, and it was particularly exciting to see that actual stone block that were originally laid millennia ago. At some points, there were stones that were put into reconstructions so you could see where the pieces fit. I am not sure if the others saw these features, for I seemed to be the only one who had photographed them. Below are clickable thumbnails for some of the pictures I took:

The Museum

After walking through the actual rooms and looking at the pools and baths, our tour route took us through the museum that displays the artifacts that have been uncovered here at the baths site. Towards the beginning of the museum section, there was a model of what the baths looked like at their height, and we took a number of pictures of this model.

We both took a number of pictures of this model of what the site looked like at one time; we looked at it from different angles and with different degrees of closeup. In addition to the good overview picture at left, I have put clickable thumbnails below for some of these other pictures:

Near to this model, there were two videos playing; these offered animated tours of the baths complex from the air and from the perspective of a visitor. I thought they were well done, and have been able to find them on the Internet. I want you to be able to watch them, and you can do so with the two movie players below:

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The rest of the museum contained a wide range of artifacts and reconstructions. There were a great many stones and markers that have been uncovered, sections of buildings that have been arranged as they were when the building was whole, skeletons, sculptures and other artifacts.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

Neither Fred nor I recorded what each individual piece might have been, but I want you to be able to see as much as you can of what we saw there. So I have selected about twenty of the best pictures we took and have put them into a slideshow.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

Walking Around Bath

During our tour through the Roman Baths, I was moving more slowly than the rest of the group from the very beginning. Actually, the last time I saw even Fred was on the terrace, near the beginning of the tour. By the time I got to the exit, having run out of battery power for my camera, I could not find anyone else. I walked here and there around the area looking for them, but had no luck, so I eventually went to the one place I knew they would be eventually- the place in Bath Abbey where the groups gather that have bought tickets to climb the tower. I just relaxed there for an hour or so until they showed up.

Later on, I found that the group had stopped for lunch somewhere (no great loss since I don't eat much at lunchtime), had walked around town for a bit, and visited the Jane Austen house. That's where Guy took the picture at left.

The exhibition at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath has been created with the guidance of local members of the Jane Austen Society and authorities on Jane Austen. It aims to be not only informative but exciting and illuminating. The Centre at 40 Gay Street in Bath houses a permanent exhibition which tells the story of Jane’s experience in the city between 1801 and 1806 and the effect that living here had on her and her writing.

Guy took a couple of other really nice pictures of Prudence and Nancy outside the Jane Austen center, and there are clickable thumbnails for them above.

And Fred used his camera to get a picture of Guy with Ms. Austen, and you can see that picture here.

So from Fred and Guy's pictures, I see that they spent some time wandering around the area of Bath near the Abbey and the Roman baths.

Below are clickable thumbnails for some of Fred's candid shots as they were walking around:

And here are clickable thumbnails for more of the candid shots that Guy and Fred took:

Climbing the Bell Tower at Bath Abbey

I met up with everyone else just a few minutes before 4PM when they all arrived back in the Abbey for our guided tour up the bell tower.

We had two guides with us on our tour, and there were about sixteen of us making the trek. We gathered at the back of the nave for a bit of history, and then we all walked down the south side aisle to the small doorway that led to one of the three stairways that lead up to the tower. Our guide paused there to tell us a little about the architecture of the Abbey and then we headed up the narrow, winding stone stairway. This stairway brought us out onto the edge of the roof over the south transcept. There, we walked along the pathway at the edge of the roof to the actual bell tower and another winding stairway. Fred paused before going into the bell tower stairs to take a picture looking back along this pathway, and you can see that picture here.

We took some pictures as we walked along this pathway; the pictures all look generally eastward, and there are clickable thumbnails below for the best of them:

We ascended a second circular stairway and came out into a large room near the top of the bell tower.

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Here, we all sat or stood around the room to listen to one of the guides talk about the clock face on the east side of the tower and the bell room on the west. You can listen to a bit of her presentation using the movie player at right. There were some display cases for us to look at and an interesting plaque describing the bell ringers. Then, because both the bell room and the room just behind the clock face were small, our group split into two.

First, our group went into the small room just inside the clock face for one guide to tell us about the history of the clock. We got two good pictures of the clock face and mechanism from the inside, and you can see those pictures by clicking on the thumbnails below:

We came back into the large room, switching places with the other half of our group. Our guide took us through another small doorway into the bell room.

It was a little disconcerting, what with the church being so old and all, to know that there was only a wood arch supporting us and all the bells, which were, of course, quite heavy. What was even more disconcerting was looking down through the half-dollar-size hole that the guide pointed out, a hole used by the bell ringers during weddings and other events to enable them to see what was going on below so that they would know when to ring the bells. (Maybe now they can text, but not so long ago there was no other way except visually to time the ringing.) You can have a look through this hole in the picture at left. (That is a person walking up the main aisle in the nave below.)

We got an interesting short lecture about the bells. This one was donated by a woman in her will, but when the time came to follow through, her estate was lacking the funds for the donation, so her extended family chipped in for the cost of the bell. Below are clickable thumbnails for a couple of pictures I took of the bells and their mechanisms:

We all returned to the main room for the final trip up yet another spiral stairway to the roof of the bell tower.

The views from the top of the tower were just tremendous, particularly towards the east. Unfortunately, there were stone balustrades all around the top of the tower, and so one's pictures had to be taken by sticking the camera through the spaces between the posts. This made constructing a panorama impractical, so we had to settle for individual views. I have put clickable thumbnails for the best of these below:

I took two more pictures up here that are of note. First, you remember that when we got to the top of the first staircase, we walked along the edge of the roof of the south transcept. I took a picture of the roof of that transcept from the top of the tower, and you can see it here. Although I did not know it at the time, when we descended down to that same level on the way back, instead of retracing our path across the south transcept, we actually walked west along the south side of the roof of the nave to go down yet another spiral stairway that brought us back into the Abbey at the back, where our tour had begun. In the picture here you can see the roof of the nave and the path that we will follow. You can also see that it overlooks the plaza where I had filmed a performer earlier in the day, and you can also see that our path along the roof edge will offer good views down into the Great Bath and its surrounding terrace.

When our group was done up top, back down the three sets of spiral stairways we went. As I went down the second of them I tried making a movie, but it was just too dark so see much. We came out, as I said above, on the south edge of the arched roof over the nave, and began walking west, where Fred got a picture of me with the bell tower in the background. There were good views to the south, including into the Great Bath, and we took quite a few pictures. Below are clickable thumbnails for the best of them:

As we were walking along the narrow walkway at the edge of the roof, I got pictures of Fred and Prudence, and also a good picture looking back at the south transcept.

Then we entered the last short stairway, where I got one good picture of Prudence coming down. This stairway also had some ventilation holes in it, and through these I could see the public square in front of the Abbey and, from another angle, the Roman Baths entry building. Fred had gone ahead of Prudence and I down this last stairway, and so he was waiting and able to get a picture of me coming out at the bottom. The tour was very interesting- much more than just going up and down stairs- and I was very glad that we had all done it. I know the stairs couldn't have been easy for Karl. (I also want to thank Guy for letting me use his camera battery so that I could take pictures on the tour.)

Returning to Bristol

It was just after five o'clock when we came out of the Abbey, and it was just starting to rain a bit, so we headed off back to the train station via a different route than the one we'd walked earlier.

At the train station, we had only a short, fifteen-minute wait for the next train back to Bristol. Again, we had a pleasant ride back; train travel seems always to be pretty much hassle free. Back at the Bristol station, we assumed we'd have to take the same number bus to get back to the Avon Gorge, so we waited for one. There was a cafe in the train station that had a sign out front. If it had been time for dinner, I wouldn't have been certain that I wanted to eat there until I got to the last item on the sign.

Below are clickable thumbnails for some of the pictures Fred took on the trip back to the hotel:

(We were right about the bus, but we found out that its route was a long one; when we'd gotten on this morning, it was near the end of a large circle that it makes starting and ending at the train station. So we had to ride quite a ways to get back.)

We had dinner at a nice local restaurant, and then the group went for hard cider. I went back to the Avon Gorge to check to see if Nancy's bag had been delivered on schedule at 4PM. I found it was not there. Very worried, I got back online to see what I could find out. All the website told me was that it had been scheduled for delivery that afternoon. I went back down to the front desk so they could help me call over to Heathrow again, and was relieved to find that the bag had just then been delivered. So I was able to give Nancy the good news when they returned a few minutes later.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	September 12, 2013: Bristol to Haltwhistle; A Walk Around Haltwhistle
	September 9-10, 2013: Traveling from Dallas to Bristol, England
	Return to the Index for Our British Isles Trip