BATH AND THE AVON RIVER VALLEY

On Monday we met up with Francesca [Jeremy's neice] for coffee, and then explored Bath for the rest of the day on our own. The Georgian architecture, exemplified in the magnificent Royal Crescent, is quite stunning. Two renowned architects of the 18th century, John Woods Elder and Younger, designed all the Palladian-style fronts of most of the buildings in Bath, so there is a grand uniformity. Each house owner was then left to design the rear of their house, so these vary enormously.


Bath Abbey is the focal point of the town and is right next to the Roman Baths.



The Pulteney Bridge crossing the river Avon, is lined with shops.

We were camping 30 minutes from Bath near Lacock Abbey, which we explored the next day.


We discovered that one of the Harry Potter movies used one of these rooms in the film.

The ceilings of the cloisters

are covered in a fascinating variety of bosses, like this one showing a fish swallowing a goat!

The Abbey also has extensive gardens

and grounds in which we found this tree: could it be an "arthritis tree"?

Lacock is a very pretty village


and has a museum displaying the earliest cameras and the first negative-positive photographs, developed by William Talbot, a resident of Lacock.

In the afternoon we went off to nearby Avebury, which is a much larger circle, of smaller stones, than Stonehenge, 27 km away.





Even part of the village is within the stone circle.

The whole circle is surrounded by a deep ditch and an embankment

We went back into Bath for an evening street comedy tour called BizarreBath, which was supposed to be the highlight of any visit to Bath, but was expensive and disappointing.

Next day we explored Bradford-on-Avon and enjoyed a 2-hour trip on the Kennet-and-Avon canal in a canal boat.

Many people live permanently on the river in houseboats

and carry everything on the roof, including firewood and the kitchen sink!

Someone made creative use of old teapots in which to plant their garden!

On the way back we stopped for ice-cream cones at an Ice cream boat.

Going through a manual lock is a leisurely activity.

Then it was time to head into Wales for a week.