We began our tour with a stop at the Museum of Costume, a museum that shows fashions through the ages. Women’s costume I should mention. Men are mentioned at one corridor where a brief glance takes in more than three hundred years of upper class clothing. And that is the way that it should be.
From the costume museum we meandered through the city’s famous landmarks, hearing and reading the name "Beau" Nash thrown about as though anything not approved by the long dead gentleman was too déclassé for words. We toured the assembly rooms where debutants came out and money was thrown about like confetti.
We saw the famous circus and the royal crescent and were less, as I said yesterday, than impressed.
It wasn’t that I object to lavish architecture or to the spending of money, if you’ve got it flaunt it, but what struck me about these places, with the exception of the assembly rooms, was how plain and industrial it all looked. Every column, every apartment seemed stamped from the same mould. Should I ever become rich, god willing, I would like something a little less factory issue. The one outstanding building was the Abbey, a beautiful place with a flavour all it's own.
From our wanderings, and after a brief respite at a fast food restaurant to remind us of home, we traveled to the bath, itself. Here Bath really shines.
At times we truly stepped back to a time when the bath was a mystic centre of power. When we stared into the outflow of water under its arch, in the blast of heat and the red minerals, it is like you are looking into the mouth of hell.
The awe of the Romans and the pagan Celts is palpable.
It becomes shocking to see the decadent use the 18th and 19th centuries put the waters too. All that was holy died as the rich bathed their ills.
We did, as all must, sample waters from the sumptuous fountains in the Pump Room and then retired to our tent, bellies rumbling discontentedly.
Next Entry: The Seedy Underbelly of Bath
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