Bath

All this walking malarkey, along with two of us sleeping badly in foreign beds, has finally caught up and we decide on a day of rest. We will be tourists at another World Heritage site – Aquae Sulis.

There are a number of benefits to this decision, not least amongst them that we can discard the plastic lunch boxes. It’s a day free of cottage cheese that separates itself on route into lumps of polystyrene packaging floating in suspect fluids. No more leftover cold curried chicken or Slimming World dressing-soaked salad. No watching those two digging into ham-filled doorsteps and chunky kit-kats with slabs of Kendal mint cake to help down their lashings of ginger beer. And as there’s none of that nonsense, there are, by default, no spine-bending rucksacks. Further, there’s no need for Hutton to attend proceedings as Bath falls outside his remit.

Someone that isn’t me drives us to Bathampton Mill where we wait in anticipation on the jetty for the 12.10 ferry into town. It never arrives – apparently it’s broken down. ‘What’s that?’ a man from Paris asks me pointing at the weir. ‘It’s a weir’, I say. ‘Where is the ship?’ says the man from France. ‘Who can say’, I reply. A boat full of Germans arrives at 12.25 and we embark to search for seats. Quite a crowd disembarked at Bathampton, believing themselves to have arrived at a place of significance. Logically, this means that there should be a few spare seats but the Germans, devoid of towels, have shuftied along the benches leaving no room for the nasty Brexiteers. It’s tricky but we accomplish the feat by sitting on two different levels. I go downstairs where someone has made the mistake of standing up. Silently, I slither into his seat.

This is by far the best way to journey into Bath – calmly gliding along the Avon with no thought of traffic congestion or parking problems in the city. A large grey heron stands serenely in the waterside foliage. Camera at the ready, I tap Herr Mann, sitting next to me, on the shoulder with a view to sharing the experience. ‘Sorry’, says he. I tap him again. ‘Sorry’, he repeats. He’s got the hang of English culture – apologise before anything has happened. ‘Look’, I say as our boat glides past. Just in time to get the photo. But Frau Mann interrupts. ‘Is it real?’ she asks. No it’s a plastic one I don’t say. You’re too late, he says. But I’m not. Just got it in time. Well, except that there’s no card in the camera. I don’t realise this until the evening having happily snapped my way round Bath. Pointlessly.

We disembark at Pultney Bridge and fall into Ponte Vecchio, a handy Italian restaurant that celebrates Bath’s effort at emulating a Florentine shop-covered bridge. We are allowed to sit on the terrace and drink long glasses of blushing rose wine whilst overlooking the river. Another luncheon party arrives followed by an animated man in a green check shirt who, without introduction or contextualisation, recounts a story concerning a juggling feat he performed on the weir 25 years ago, along with an unfathomable account of Robert Maxwell’s coffin. We assume him to be the restaurateur, especially when he asks us how far we’ve come. However, he turns out to be with the other party. He is loud and boring and needy of attention. No matter, the lunch, seafood in tomato sauce on pasta, is splendid.

 Subsequently, having had the foresight to book online, we bypass the hordes in the abbey square and join the hordes inside the Roman Baths replete with our audio aids, voiced over by that much-loved Brit, Bill Bryson. I haven’t been here for years. Half of it hasn’t changed. Since the Romans. The other half has been brought up to date in décor and display but the audio aid is overwhelming and is quickly abandoned. Next year, even more of it will be opened up to the public in a sort of interactive way. Swimming and suchlike perhaps. (Photo courtesy of Pathfinder Powell)

A brief look around the shops. Those two want to go into Milletts. I don’t so I rest awhile on a handy fishing chair that’s being advertised on the pavement, passing the time thinking of excuses to recount if a Milletts type emerges to ask what I’m doing. I recall a long-ago shopping trip to Bath with Barbara which seemed to be full of incidents. One of those inconsequential days in which nothing of particular importance occurs, yet one that will always be remembered: passing each other on the escalator in Debenhams like something from that old, old joke about the Pope’s haircut; me persuading her to purchase an extraordinarily expensive lemon skirt from an exclusive boutique which, to my knowledge, she never wore; attempting to board the two-carriage train home that was full of Bristol Rovers’ supporters trying to stop the Bath Rugby folk from boarding; a man wearing a small Box hedge on his head. Happy days. B and the pathfinder come back out into the open and pretend they’re nothing to do with me on my reminiscent recalling fishing chair. Then, the boat back to Bathampton. Not an otter or a woodpecker in sight but it’s calm and peaceful and it was a good rest day.