Bath: 26/4/23

 After a buffet breakfast I went out to visit the Roman Baths. At 9:30 I was early enough to beat the rush, but people soon came crowding in, and I was glad once again not to be here in tourist season. Glenda and I did the tour in 2007, but I remember nothing of it, and they have revamped the buildings a bit, so it's a bit different anyway. It's not a particularly large structure in itself, but they hand out free audio guide devices, which tends to slow down your progress as you listen to the narrative. 

So it took about an hour and a half over all to wander through the history of the baths, their construction, the local archaeology and so on. The bath itself is the centrepiece, but nobody showed any interest in swimming in the warm green oily water. A slight smell of sulphur pervades the area, and you can see the water in the supply pool bubbling up from the hot springs. There was a temple attached to the baths in Roman times, and they have managed to reconstruct some of it, and identified some of the people there from epitaphs and gravestones, including a haruspex in a funny hat, who forecast the future from animal entrails. But the one unique feature -- the water fountain at which you can actually drink the water -- is temporarily closed off, and I wasn't about to buy a bottle for ten pounds in the gift shop.

So from here to the Victoria Gallery, which has free entry to one large room on the first floor where the permanent collection is, and paid entry to the ground floor, which was having an exhibition by the Bath Society of Artists. Some very good material indeed in here, much better than those of the featured professional, as well as occasional examples of the usual abstract rubbish. Very impressive on the whole. The top floor was well laid-out, with a few prize Gainsboroughs and some Zoffany portraits, but nothing else of great interest.

I took a stroll over Pulteney Bridge, across the Avon, which is lined with little shops like those in Venice, and back along the Avon towpath to the hotel, where I had rolls and cheese for lunch. No rain, but a very grey and depressing day. Later I set out again to the Herschel Museum, which is in the terrace house where William Herschel and his sister Caroline built telescopes and made their observations, assisted by his brother Alex. They actually came to Bath from Germany to write and perform music, and there are some recordings of William's compositions, but astronomy took over their lives; he became Astronomer Royal, and as his assistant she was the first woman in England to actually draw a salary for working in astronomy. He used to polish his own lenses, and there are some examples still in the rooms, as well as model telescopes, pictures from the time and a couple of videos. Interesting in its own right but -- like most of the non-free museums here -- wildly overpriced.

Wandered around a bit more until the grey gloom got to me and I stopped at a pub near the hotel for a craft beer. There is a good choice of beers here, and many of them come from Bristol, which is a good sign -- but they're not cheap either. I have booked a brewery tour at the Bath Brew House for tomorrow afternoon, which includes a beer; possibly that exellent one whose name I can't remember or find on the web.

And so back to the hotel. I had a go at writing something, but didn't feel confident about it. My audience numbers on Podbean are dropping rapidly, although the commercial streaming remains more or less steady so far. Tomorrow I visit a laudromat and a Georgian house museum, in that order.