Bath

After almost killing myself scanning for the past 3 weeks in the hospital, I requested for a couple days off this week and dragged Matt kicking and screaming to Bath; the ANCIENT HEALING AND THERAPEUTIC SPA city. The place is prehistoric ancient, even stone-age ancient. Of course I am referring to the Roman Baths:
I figure, if the place is good for Kings

Queens , rich,

poor and lepers

then it will be good for me and Matt too.

Interestingly, Britain has a "Britain in Bloom" competition which as the name suggests, awards a price to the prettiest town during spring. Bath has been banned from this competition because it has won it so many times that the competition was becoming a formality :).

It did take a bit of effort to convince Matt to go to the Spa with me, a good nag at breakfast each morning and more nagging at night finally won him over.

The current operating spa is a 4 level modern building built (as are many business in Bath) within an historic building.

The spa still uses the same natural thermal water used by the Roman Baths. The theory is that rainfall around 10,000 years ago sank to a depth of about 2km below the earth's surface and was there heated by high temperature rocks in the earth before rising back up through a break in the limestone that lies beneath the city of Bath. It must have been a very very heavy rain, coz over 1 million litres of mineral-rich 45°C water flows from the thermal springs each day, and there is no sign of it subsiding. (http://www.thermaebathspa.com/index.html)

We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly in the spa center running up and down the building sampling different saunas (Lavender, Jasmine and Eucalyptus scented) and the two spa pools like little kids. Perhaps the highlight is the awesome shower which is positioned in the centre of the saunas which threatens to turn you into pulp (well, slight exaggeration, but what a shower).

Abbey Church opens onto the same square as the Roman Baths.

I especially liked the two ladders on either side of the entrance. If you look closely you can see angels climbing towards the Lord - well all angels but one - Lucifer who is climbing down.

The marvelous windows inside the church earned it the title 'Lantern of the West'.


We managed to squeeze a short tour into our break to visit the Stonehenge - look, non-matching beanies!!!











Now this place used to be quite forrested, but when the early settlers moved in, those darned annoying trees were removed. A consequence of this is there is nothing to alleviate the bone-chilling wind that threatens to ice your very soul. Look, even the rocks are huddling together for warmth...


While on this tour we were treated with a few little stories but unfortunately were unable to get as many photos as we'd have liked for illustration. However, one little snippet was the how the phrase "blind drunk" came about. Through a number of the villages we passed through during the tour, there were these single-room huts with not even a slit as a window so were pitch black when shut up. The room comprised of a bed and a privy as shown right. The town sherif would throw a waylaid drunk in these huts overnight to sober up. Of course, when the drunk was let out in the morning, the sunlight was blinding.


The tour also brought to a village called LACOCK. I'm sure the French will chuckle over the name. But then, perhaps they named it given the village was founded around the time of the Norman invasion. The town experienced an economical boom through the wool trade for about 4 centuries from the 1300's but then was largely left behind and consequently became a lovely snapshot of bygone eras.


The village was donated to the National Trust and all but a few tenants rent. Because of it's historical significance, there are restrictions in place to what tenants can do. You'll not see a TV antenna here. But you will see important pieces of information such as the words towards the bottom of this sign:

Unsurprisingly, LaCOCK is the perfect village for filming historical and not-so historical pieces for example Pride and Prejudice and . ....

Harry Potter!!




Before I bid a hasty farewell, I would like to share some images of the NEW AGE PILGRIMS At the Roman Baths HAVE A FANTASTIC DAY ~~~~

Goodbye Bath

Lake District

Summer in UK is over. It is no longer bright from 5am till 9.30pm. We turned on the heater at 4.30pm yesterday. For some deluded reason I’ve expected the cold weather will not hit us so fast, but luckily the heating system in this house is pretty efficient.

The Brits celebrate the last weekend of summer with a bank holiday and not wanting to be left out of the mad dash to all places near and far we spent it in Lake District.

It was a good 3 hours drive from Birmingham - around 160Miles - drivinng at 80mph on the M6 we were still lagging behind the zany british motorists. We headed off at 6.30am to avoid traffic - a cunning plan that paid off. According to Sally, all brits and their dogs head off to the country side on long weekends.

We reached the New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel at approximately 10.15am. Matt and I had a cuppa and to Matt's delight, they used FULL CREAM milk to make his Cappucino. While waiting to check in at 2pm, Matt and I decided to take a walk up those Fells behind the hotel. So armed with half a bottle of water, a running-out-of-battery camera and a £2 map we started our journey.

Everytime serious hikers with backpacks, camping gear, climbing robes and walking stick followed us, we paused and pretended to take picture while secretly catching our breath and let them pass.

The camera ran out of battery pretty much 10 minutes into our journey so we can't show you the majestic climb we achieved. A very good excuse you might say... but that's God's intention. (I have decided to use the name of the Almighty more often now since I started scanning lots of devoted muslim these days, and they won't argue with me when I say I can't gurantee the sex of their babies; only God give gurantees.)

Anyway, after almost an hour walked, we decided to turn back as the ground plants got thicker and we were getting hungry and exhausted. My legs were pretty wobbly when I reached the road.

There was still 1 1/2 hour before we can checked into the room so we drove around a bit in the hope to find a romantic cruise lunch somewhere, but we had little idea of what we were doing, we did however managed to take a 5 minutes ferry across a lake but the town was just filled with tourists and cars so we decided to head back to the hotel for lunch. We collapsed in our room for the afternoon and braved for another short walk in the evening.

There is a million interesting things to do in Lake District. One would imagine to spend at least a good month to have cover half of the activities offered. After a good debate, we decided to visit the Honister Slate Mine.

We set out about 9.30am after breakfast. Following our trusted Tom-Tom's advice we drove through what seems like endless nerve-biting narrow streets, which at one point even had the bottom of the car scratched loudly while trying to give way to the on-coming vehicle, we arrived at Keswick at approximately 11am. We parked at the foot of the hill and found the tourist information centre which we were told the mine is about 1+ miles up hill. Mr. Moran decided it was a good idea for us to 'just' walk up to the mine.

As you notice from the photo, that one mile or so walk was on a mostly 25degrees incline and I am still not sure when the lady said the mine is 1 mile up ; whether she meant the mile is a straight line from the foot of the hill to the destination or is it the winding up hill walk?

Car upon car flies past us and Matt refused to stick his finger out to hitch a hike.

We finally gave up hiking what seems like the last 2 inclined on the road and flagged down the bus.

THE ENTRANCE OF THE HONISTER SLATE MINE. HURRAY!

Matt appreciating the picturesque scenary with his much deserved cup of tea before the start of the tour.

Dressing up for the occasion.

Marching up the mine like a real man.

Matt paying attention to the safety instruction, while I'm with the fairies.

And that's the beginning of our adventure.