Bath time: 12-14 Aug 13

Monday 12 Aug 13: Lots of what the government does puzzles me and it was the same for those which have gone before. And what it does with the railways puzzles as much as any but it’s a result of new rail franchises that I was able to travel in style to Bath without breaking the bank.

It’s the result of a bad news and good news story combined with the fact that the First Group, which operates trains, now has the franchises for both the Cambridge to London route and for the routes to South Wales and the south-west out of Paddington. The bad news is that I’m old enough for a senior’s travel card. The good news is that with the card and an advanced purchase ticket I was able to get a really good through deal from Cambridge to Bath, first class. It’s a good way to travel.

I left Cambridge, cheekily described as the home of Anglia Ruskin University, at 0950. That gave me an easy transfer via the underground onto the 1044 which would take me to Bath. I seemed to have the train to myself which I guess was the result of travelling first class out of season and after the early morning peak. You get free refreshments in first class but I’ve been there before and know what the coffee’s going to taste like so bought one to go at a convenient Caffe Nero.

Institutional coffee gives coffee a bad name and I have this theory that it’s brewed on an industrial scale on Canvey Island and moved around the UK by tank truck so that places which serve it stock up for entire seasons before unloading it on the uncritical public. I don’t drink it.

Bath is one of the UK’s small cities: those with a population of around about 100,000. They are good places to visit because you can pretty quickly get to know your way around and do so on foot. Some of them have particular attractions and whereas they may not offer as much as the big ones what they do offer is on a more human scale and they don’t have the problems of crime and pollution that go with them. I grew up near one of them (Chester with its Roman heritage and its Tudor buildings) and I live next door to another (Cambridge with its university). Bath bears comparison with its Roman heritage and its Georgian buildings. In fact it goes one better because it’s also got a premiership rugby team. It’s also got some hills.

I arrived in time for lunch and took pot luck: Tilley’s Bistro (www.tilleysbistro.co.uk). More a cafe than a restaurant but the food was fine and the service friendly. It’s rated number 7 on TripAdvisor and it was also usefully convenient right next to Bath Abbey, which is no longer an Abbey but merely Bath’s parish church, which is itself next to the Roman Baths.

What strikes the visitor is not just Bath’s compactness but it’s apparent easy relationship with the motor car. There are roads used by cars but they don’t seem overly busy and much of the centre is pedestrianised. And for a tourist destination it’s a lot less frantic than Cambridge. It’s also a very uniform city with just about all of its buildings being built using Bath Stone, a local limestone. Even the new developments, for shopping and at the bus station, use Bath stone. The old tram station is the only brick building in the city. Futhermore it’s a city with plenty of local shops. All the big national chains are there but there are also many small, specialist stores. I guess this is possible because there is no single all powerful landlord as there is in Cambridge.

I headed off to see the Royal Crescent and I’d say I was underwhelmed. It is dramatic, elegant and complete but it looked to me like it needed a bit of a refresh. It was not a sunny day so that was a disadvantage but the houses were in different states of repair. Most of them could do with a good steam clean. There’s a big bush in the middle which has no business being there and down in the low numbers one of the houses has ugly scaffolding outside it. When they have to do this in Italy they cover the scaffolding with an elegant picture of what should be behind it. In Bath it’s simply grubby canvas or similar. I’m sorry but it’s not what I’d expect from a one of the countries premier tourist attractions and a signal example of Georgian architecture.

Next to the Royal Crescent is The Circus which is equally elegant but do the enormous trees in the center add to or subtract from it? They are beautiful trees in their own right but they do deprive the visitor of a stand back look at the perimeter.

Bath of course is famous for its hot springs, the only ones in the UK, and these were the foundation for the growth of the city in the 18th century when it was fashionable to ‘take the waters’. Today you can do that at the Thermae Bath Spa (www.thermaebathspa.com) with steam rooms and a roof top pool. I went because you can’t go to Bath and not do so. The only other hot baths I’ve been to have been in Germany  and it seemed strange to hear people speaking English in what for me is an essentially German setting. You get 2 hours for your money which for me seems generous. There’s a limit to the number of times you want to go into the steam room and to the length of time you can sit in a hot swimming pool even if it’s on a roof top. So I did my time and came out suitably invigorated.

For dinner I relied on the wisdom of crowds aka TripAdvisor. Sotto Sotto (www.sottosotto.co.uk) is rated number 1 and was just round the corner from my hotel so I went there. It’s Italian with a bit of a stereotypical menu but very good. Not sure it deserves to be number 1 but it’s certainly up there partly due I suspect to the encouragement given to all diners to ‘give us a mention on TripAdvisor’!

Traveller beware: I booked my hotel though www.booking.com (formerly www.activehotelss.co.uk) and got a pretty good deal at Pratt’s Hotel (www.prattshotel.co.uk) which is midway between the station and the town centre. Incidentally that’s another difference between Bath and Cambridge, its railway station is within 5 minutes walk of the centre of the city. Anyway I got a clean and adequately equipped (including free wifi) single room on the top floor. No problem, there is a lift, but it was hot and sleeping with the windows open you felt that you were staying in a seagulls’ breeding colony. I have never known birds so loud. So traveller by all means stay at Pratt’s but not mid summer, not on the top floor and not in a north facing room!

Tuesday, 13 Aug 13: After yesterday’s moderate disappointment today delivered massive compensation as I headed across the river by the Pulteney Bridge to the Holburne Museum (www.holburne.org). This is a museum to match the city: small, intimate and just a little bit quirky. It used to be a hotel (the Sydney Hotel) and its front is classic Georgian facing down Great Pulteney Street (yet another example of good Georgian urban development). Around the back though it’s different with a very modern extension which doubles its size and enables it to house a very acceptable coffee shop looking out onto the back lawns.

I say quirky. At the moment there’s a display of North Wales based Japanese Junko Mori’s Coppiced Wood, the inevitable collection of paintings some by quite significant artists and a superb display of contemporary artefacts bequeathed to the people of Bath by Sir Thomas William Holburne’s sister. These are a comprehensive collection of the time and tell the story of life in Georgian Bath simply and with humour.

The good day continued as I headed up to Alexandra Park which is south of the railway station, across the river and then up the Jacob’s Ladder a few hundred feet (anybody know how may?) to give me the most superb view across the city. That’s when you realise that Bath really is a city of Bath Stone and Georgian architecture with several crescents, streets and circuses on view. And once you’ve done that you can treat yourself to lunch! And that took me to the Pump Room at the Roman Baths.

The Pump Room tries hard to be a snapshot of a more gentile time. It’s got starched white table cloths, heavy silverware and good quality china ware. In the afternoon there’s live light classical music to entertain you. And the teas are appropriately creamy with those 3 tiered cake stands of another era. The waiters are liveried and pleasant and my lunch was just fine. However I rated it just 4 out of 5 on TripAdvisor because it could have been a little slicker. If you check my review you’ll see that one Kayleigh R who’s a ‘marketing ‘executive has responded but with exactly the same anodyne response which she’s given to other reviews. It’s what gives marketing a bad name and it doesn’t do much for the Pump Room’s either!

I used the afternoon to redefine ‘bland’. I took a boat trip up-stream to Bathampton. There’s practically nothing to see.

For dinner I relied on tripadvisor again and went to the Circus Cafe and Restaurant (number 7;  www.thecircuscafeandrestaurant.co.uk). The Circus is the one up by the Royal Crescent so it was a nice walk across town. I was seated promptly and the food was excellent but the evening came unstuck when I looked for whatever wines were available by the glass. There was only the house wine and the glass I had ‘wasn’t great’. Really disappointing and the trigger for my previous post (click here to read that).

Wednesday, 14 Aug 13: after breakfast at Caffe Nero (I’m beginning to think that if you’re overnighting in a hotel in town you now get a better continental breakfast at a coffee shop than you would in the hotel itself) I joined the queue at the Roman Baths (www.romanbaths.co.uk) or, to be truthful I didn’t. The previous day there had been long queues at the Baths but at 0930 on this day I walked straight in and then joined the 10 o’clock guided tour itself. The Roman Baths is (are?) a first class attraction. It’s well presented and there are audio guides for those who don’t want to join a group (there were only 5 in the one I was with).

There are three channels on the audio guide. There’s the main channel with plenty of detail but it does rather go on, there’s a channel for kids and another one with Bill Bryson, in several languages of course.

The main channel on the audio guide is narrated by experts but there’s a prologue which is rather strange and it’s consistent with similar strangeness I observed around town. Bath is a part of Bath and North Somerset for local government purposes so lots of signs don’t brand the city simply as Bath but as Bath and North Somerset. I’m not sure that the visitors who come to see Bath are concerned with the name of the district council. It’s another example of poor/silly marketing. The brand is Bath. Anyway the prologue is given by a speaker who identifies himself as an officer, probably a director of tourism or similar, of Bath and North Somerset District Council. Why? If I’ve just come from China or the US I want to see Bath, not to be confused by the details of local government.

Lunch at the No 5 Bistro (www.no5bistro.co.uk rated 24 in TripAdvisor). Exactly what it says on the can: a local bistro serving good inexpensive food well. There was a decent choice of wines by the glass as well which makes the point to the Circus that smaller restaurants can make such an offer.

So that was it. 3 days and 2 nights in one of the UK’s premier tourist destinations and I can understand why. It’s compact and unspoiled and it’s got 2 world-class attractions (although The Royal Crescent could do with a bit of a refresh). Despite it being midsummer and there being lots of tourists around it was not unpleasant. It is a UNESCO world heritage site. Click here for a very comprehensive explanation why.

It was the first time that I’d used TripAdvisor so obsessively (following the successes in Avignon and Cordoba) and this proved useful. No doubt I’d have found other good restaurants but I wouldn’t have known where I was in the pecking order so three cheers for the wisdom of crowds. I’ve posted reviews of all 5 restaurants and my hotel.