Our Land Location: 51°22′53″ N 2°21′34″ W

I met up with Catherine at Heathrow Airport on Saturday morning & then we took a highway bus to the City of Bath – about 2 hours away. We hadn’t seen each other for two weeks so I wanted to make it easy for her to find me in the arrivals area at the airport.

We spent the past few days in the City of Bath. This city was founded by the Romans around the year 60 AD. Roman style baths were built to take advantage of the area’s natural hot springs. The historical preservation and presentation of the Roman ruins is very impressive.

Over the centuries Bath has developed into an amazing place & the entire city is now designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

During our visit Catherine took advantage of opportunities to mix with the locals. The lady below – stationed outside a chocolate shoppe was very sweet.

On Sunday we took a free two hour walking tour of the city. Our guide was excellent & he shared a wealth of information with the group we were in.

Bath is a very easy place to get around. Most of the major things you want to see are within a 30 minute walk of the city center plus there are plenty of hop on – hop off busses.

One of the most impressive places for me was the Royal Crescent houses. The Crescent, built 250 years ago is comprised of 30 terraced row houses.

At the time this was built Bath was attracting a lot of wealthy people so there was lots of money available for architects & builders to showcase their talents.

Just a short distance away from the Royal Crescent is another very unique development called “The Circus”. There are 3 sets of row houses built in a circle around a central park.

There is also a huge abbey built adjacent to the Roman Baths. Our tour guide told us that there has been a church on this site since the 7th century (1,000 years!). This abbey is the 3rd building on the site & it is actually considerably smaller than its predecessor. We went to an Evensong service there on Sunday afternoon. That was very special.

It was a lot of fun & very interesting to spend the past two days in Bath. We could easily spend two weeks here & still not have been able to see everything the city has to offer.

Next stop – the City of Oxford.

Cheers!