City of Bath.

This week my wife and I had a pleasant couple of days in the city of Bath. It was the first time I have had any time in Bath to wander around and enjoy its history and architecture. We stayed in a lovely hotel just outside of Bath. The Waterhouse, is set in a lovely patch of countryside not far from the Kennet and Avon Canal. It was only a ten minute drive from Bath’s city centre and with a combination of a  warm welcome from the staff  and the hotel being clean and tidy, I would highly recommend a stay here.

Bath is a great city with amazing architecture which ever direction you look. The yellow Bath stone can be seen in most buildings and the vast streets of  Georgian architecture is something to be seen.

At heart I am a country boy but every now and then I do enjoy a few days surfing the city life, I will look forward to visiting Bath again to uncover some more history and enjoy what this great city has to offer.

We were very lucky with the weather and managed to have a good walk around the city, including a visit to the Roman Baths. The Roman baths were excellent and far better than I had anticipated. Often when you queue up at these museums and attractions, you wonder whether the high entry price will be worth what is ahead of you but in this instance it certainly was. Not only is the site itself amazing, the layout and information available is outstanding. They provide an audio tour just like the one available at Cardiff  castle. I am a big fan of these handheld style audio tours as you can walk about at your own pace deciding what you want to listen to.

Below are some bullet points about the Roman Baths in Bath.

• Bath is home to the only natural hot spring in the UK
• At the heart of the site is the Sacred Spring.  Hot water at a temperature of 46°C rises here at the rate of 1,170,000 litres  every day and has been doing so for thousands of years.
  
• The water rises at 46°C but by the time it reaches the open air Great Bath is cools slightly to about 36°C .
• The Roman Baths were not discovered and explored until the late nineteenth century.
• The site of the Roman Baths extend under the cities streets and are a lot large than expected.
• Lead pipes were used to carry hot spa water around the site using gravity flow.
• The main pool is lined with 45 sheets of lead, and filled with hot spa water
• Over the main pool an enormous barrel-vaulted hall once stood. It rose to a height of 40 metres.  For many Roman visitors this may have been the largest building they had ever seen or entered in their life.
• The Roman Baths were in use for four hundred years and underwent many changes throughout this time.
• The Roman Baths included heated rooms and cold plunge pools.
• The scale of hot water available was a first for the Romans as producing hot water was timely and expensive.
• To help support the lined walls of the main bath, oak piles were driven into the mud. The oak piles sunk into the mud two thousand years ago continue to provide a stable foundation for the Roman reservoir walls today.
• Two thousand years later the sluice designed and built by the Romans to regulate the flow of water leaving the main bath is still in use.

Above are just a few interesting points I found out on my visit, as you will now know if you follow my blogs, I like to add a little history and information to accompany my images.