Bath

Bath is a lovely city. We were there about fifteen (maybe?) years ago and I had a hankering to go back, so since we were to be in Wales, and Bath is relatively near there (but not at all near Edinburgh) we decided to spend a few days there. We were in an Airbnb. The main part of Bath is set in a valley with steep hills on either side, and our accommodation was quite high up on one of those steep hills. This is the view when we were part of the way down.

The great thing about being oldish is that one often forgets whether one's visited certain places before. Had we previously visited Bath Abbey? You'd think so but I forget. Anyway, here's the amazing fan-vaulted ceiling. It's very high. From what I gather, this isn't actually particularly old - dating from 1868. There's been a place of worship here since 765, but it's spent a lot of its time over the centuries falling down and being restored and falling down again, so much of it dates only from the 16th century and quite a lot of the rest is even more recent
.

There was a wonderful exhibition of dyptyches by Sue Symons depicting images from the Old Testament, the left-hand sides mostly painted and the right-had sides mainly embroidered.

Thus.

And many many more.

We said hello to Jane Austen in the Assembly Rooms

and enjoyed Bath's architecture, which is very like Edinburgh's New Town. This is a famous circular street, aptly called The Circus.

 In the middle are some VERY LARGE plane trees. Can you see tiny Mr L in the middle of them? (He's actually a tall chap.)

Then we went to the American Museum, which had an exhibition of old quilts and Kaffe Fasset's reinterpretation of them in his own fabrics. Above, Kaffe's. Below, a quilt made by two sisters in the 1800s, who competed to see who could use more pieces of fabric. That middle square uses really tiny scraps in half-square triangles.

This is an old one.

This is Kaffe's. I prefer the colours of the old one. His fabrics are too bright for my taste - maybe I mean too orange.

Old one.

Kaffe's. I have another million photos but that may be enough.

And of course we visited the Roman Baths to admire this two-thousand-year-old pavement mosaic,

this similarly elderly head of Sulis-Minerva

and the baths themselves, where it would have been easier to imagine ancient Romans besporting themselves if lots of other tourists hadn't been there too. But all the same, I was aware of treading on Roman flagstones and walking through the shades of people of the distant past.

We got home on Wednesday. And then tomorrow I'm off back down to England again to visit Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter. I can't say that I relish yet another journey but I haven't seen them since August. Mr L has decided to stay at home and catch up with things, including, I imagine, lots of recorded television. Perhaps he'll also cut the grass. Oh, and he's going to take Older Grandson to a bus museum on Sunday afternoon. Now, that'll be popular.