11-May-08 Side Trip to Bath

Yesterday we drove about 1hr 40 min to the old city of Bath, England. There are remains of the Roman baths from Roman times, where you can drink a glass of water fresh from the underground springs. It's safe, but it smells of sulfur and tastes quite "minerally". You can take a tour of the old roman baths and structure, but as we've visited here before, we skipped the tour this time.

There's an old famous bakery there, Sally Lunn's bun shop. So it's a little cheesy, and there's a whole tour of the old traditional stone bakery (we skipped the tour), but you can order a bun and get clotted cream (basically a thick sweet cream for putting on breads/pastries), and tea. The bread IS good, but don't think it's the be-all, end-all of breads.

The last time we had visited the city of Bath, was in 2001. Since then, it has added a number of upscale retail shops along the streets, including Gap, Disney store, etc.

I think the best part of the trip was the drive up the A350 through the area around Blandford Forum, a group of multiple communities nestled against high hills, with sprawling green fields/pastures and dotted with little quaint villages. As we started out late in the morning, we didn't have time to make any stops along the way to see the towns. The drive up was using a medium-sized road, that required us to slow down to 30-40 mph as we went through the towns. And there are a number of speed cameras along the way to make sure you comply.