Started out from Cardiff this morning with a fairly long day of travel in front of us - all the way to Plymouth today.
The first stop was at Bath, to see the Roman Baths. I didn't expect to be all that excited by this, but as it turned out I could easily have spent much more time there - it's a fascinating story and the whole area of the baths is really well displayed and explained. We didn't have enough time to look at it in the detail I'd have liked to see - so maybe another place to be added to our 'come back here someday' list.
Here's a picture - but it's really the sort of place you have to see to fully appreciate it.
There's also an abbey at Bath. Like so many others it was basically destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries, but the site was put back into use as a parish church about 70 years later. The church has been rebuilt over the centuries and is now a small but beautiful place. Again, pictures don't do it justice, but here's a couple anyway:
Next stop was an unscheduled one - we stopped in Wells to see Vicars Close which is claimed to be "the oldest purely residential street with its original buildings all surviving intact in Europe" - all the buildings are from the mid 14th century.
Apart from that though, the interesting thing was the cathedral. Unlike many others we have seen - including two others we saw today, Wells Cathedral was not destroyed by Henry VIII. We had no idea that we were going to see a cathedral; we couldn't go inside, but it was an amazing surprise to see such a beautiful building so unexpectedly.
Next stop was Glastonbury - this was and still is the "hippie" centre of the UK, and is also the site of a huge rock and folk festival each year. However, again, the highlight of the visit was an abbey, but this time the ruins of one. It was an enormous building and it must have been awe-inspiring, but it was almost completely destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries. I can only assume that the one at Wells survived because they were prepared to change over to the new forms of worship required by Henry VIII, but that the monks at Glastonbury could not bring themselves to do so. When you look at the size and majesty of what this building represented - physically and emotionally - the dissolution must have had just as enormous an effect on the common people as September 11 did in our time.
Final stop was Plymouth. We spend two nights here, and it will be good to have a rest from having to have the suitcase out in the morning. The hotel doesn't have air-conditioning, or a fridge in the room, but it's nowhere near as basic as the Hydro was, so it should be ok. Tonight the rest of the group has gone out to another hotel for dinner, but it was an option to stay in the hotel and Paul and I took it up. We were supposed to have a set menu but they took pity on us and let us have a pick of the a la carte menu. And, we were also supposed to only have £6 of included drinks - but we had a 175ml glass of a nice white wine each - it was supposed to cost £5.50 but they topped it up for free for us. Very nice! We're dining here tomorrow night too, but I suspect that it will be back to the set menu since the whole group will be here.
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