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Wednesday, 23 April 2014

Europe Day 5: Cotswolds to Bath

Next stop was somewhere starting with ‘B’.
Let’s see, Bourton?
Banbury?
How about Broadway?  Yes.  Broadway was a very large town, however the inner city was a beautiful village in the same style as the other Cotswolds towns we had so far visited.
Our next priority of the day was breakfast, and the lady in the handbag shop recommended the Market Pantry.  It was a very good recommendation.  Full English Breakfast please.
Yum sausage, poached egg, mushies and oven roasted tomatoes on the vine; they were so sweet.
Our destination for today was Bath, and our drive there was just gorgeous through green pastures neatly divided into lots by dry stone walls and hedgerows.  Passing through Winchcombe, we turned down a narrow street amongst old stone cottages, and wait…  Is that a sign to a castle?  Let’s go check out the castle!
We back-tracked and drove up to Sudeley Castle.  We thought to just look from the outside as we drove past, as we had to get to Bath and not so late, however the castle was just too beautiful so in we went.
The gardens were magnificent: with a pool full of large carp, sculptured garden beds and gorgeous views across the Cotswolds.
The castle is a functioning private residence, opened to the public and largely restored and redecorated.
In some parts of the castle photos were allowed, and in others not.  I tried to take a photo of the general’s campaign commode, but was told off.  I’m accruing a list of no photos infractions.  And it was a shame really; a lovely porcelain loo, with Windsor styled pot is not something one sees every day.
The other castle displays seemed to have this as a bit of a theme as well, with a reconstruction of the queen’s privy; a luxurious privy of all plush velvet, and with her own special chambermaid of the stool to wipe her regal derriere.
Apart from number ones and twos, the castle is renowned for being the only castle in which a queen is actually buried.  Katherine Parr, last wife of good ol’ Henry VIII is resting in the church out the back.
We spent a good hour or so here wandering the castle and the gardens, leaving the grounds via the pheasantry.
Now, destination Bath was keyed into both of our car navigators; this was a mistake as neither could agree on which way to go.  After seemingly going around in circles, we found our way to the motorway heading south.
The Bath region is extremely hilly, and we could see the town’s Georgian styled terraces snaking across the hills in the distance.  Yet another totally gorgeous place I wished we could stay so much longer in.
Now when in Bath, the place to visit is the Roman Baths; we spent a couple of fascinating hours exploring them.  So much amazing history: from the Celts seeing it as a place of gods, the Romans walling off the pools and building elaborate bathing areas, heated rooms, plunge pools and the remains of Minerva’s Temple.

Dinner was a goat’s cheese bun followed by a huge steak at Sally Lunn’s Buns.  Everything here is served with buns, using a recipe discovered secreted away in the wall.  The buns really are nice and worth the visit.
The evening was spent strolling through the city streets, through the parks and along the Avon River, as well as a drive around the affluent parts of the city to see some of the majestic terraced houses on The Circus and Royal Crescent.


See more photos of the Cotswolds and Bath here;

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