England Day 5

In the morning we wandered around the old Bristol markets and found out that we could not get to Cheddar (that’s right the town of cheese!) and it’s apparently well known gorge on a week day, so we caught a local bus to Bath. Now surely everyone that visits wants to have a bath in Bath, and Ben and I were no different. I’m sure we do appear quite worldly, and proper, being two well to do, travelling University students, but nothing makes us more chipper than some fun words – and the proposition of being able to say ‘we had a bath in Bath’ had us had us foaming at the mouth. But once we had found our way to the hostel by sneakily following another backpacker that was on the bus with us, we discovered that our bathing dreams might not be fulfilled. Apparently people are not allowed to swim in the 800 year old Roman baths, and if you want to experience the goodness and healing properties of Bath water you need to go to a new Bath Spa centre around the corner which costs £20 for two hours and it is all modern and icky. So we passed on the modern dip and instead had a lovely combined tour of the Fashion museum, and Roman Baths.
Apparently back in the day, the Romans would have a work out in a heated room, then have a slave scrap the perspiration and crud from off their bodies with a with a metal scraper, before having a massage and then having a paddle in the steaming hot baths. Now I certainly would have paid £20 for that sort of treatment. Come here my little Roman slave! We also got a glassful of the fabled Bath water, which tasted like normal bath water – but we knocked it back. So from Italians from long ago having fun with heat, Ben and I then tried Italians having fun with the cold – Gelato! (Beat that Anna Coren!) Once our mega super bowl of fantastic chilly goodness was consumed, we bought some pasta, sauce and cheese, whipped it up in the hostel, and went to see the film ‘American Gangster’ starring our mate Rusty and Denzel Washington. This cinema was quite different to Aberystwyth’s being really big and modern, and we were assigned seats. The film was fantastic, rough and brutal, but very well done, quite engaging. That night I had a shower in the hostel – it was cold and not fun, would have preferred a bath.