Day 21, Monday, October 5 Sherborne and Bath

Hello to all our friends and family! We hope you are all doing well, and we are grateful for those of you who are emailing us. We miss you all. Today, after David worked, we drove to the city of Bath. There are many Roman ruins in Bath since the Romans had a great appreciation for the natural hot springs that occur there. But, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Before we left, we wanted to do a bit of exploring around the grounds of Sherborne house. It is so beautiful here. The setting is like something from a story book. So we set out. Along the backside of the property, you come to one beautiful sight after another.

To the left is a lovely garden bed, even in October, and to the right is a fish pond with colorful carp swimming around, ready for someone to feed them.

Here is another photo of the pond.  You can see the solarium (sun room) behind.

Just beyond the fish pond, you walk down a long lane toward a tennis court and an indoor, heated swimming pool. No, we didn't take a dip in the pool.  We didn't bring our swim suits!

We were excited to find a long row of pear trees in an espalier (trees that have been pruned to lay flat against a wall.) The caretaker told us the day before that we were welcome to pick and eat some, so we enjoyed some pears with dinner.

There are some amazing trees on the Sherborne property.  Some of these trees have been here over a century, at least.  Cathy is approaching one of the larger cedars.  David has seen several cedars of Lebanon and he says that they have nothing on these trees.

After our walk around Sherborne property, we got in our little Ford Fiesta and drove to Bath. It took us about 90 minutes to make the drive. We stayed in a place called the Edgar Townhouse.  It is a good example of Georgian architecture.  In fact, the people in Bath say it is the best example of Georgian architecture.  It is located right off of the Pulteney Bridge, which is the bridge going across the River Avon.  It is a bridge full of  narrow shoppes. 

Here is a photo of the Pulteney Bridge.  I know, it doesn't look  like a bridge, but there are narrow shoppes on each side of the two-way street. 

Beneath Pulteney Bridge is a picturesque man-made waterfall across the Avon River.  This is the same river that runs through Shakespeare's town, Stratford.

A path runs down both sides of the Avon river.  We walked downstream and crossed another bridge and walked past a beautiful garden at the center of the city. They have made topiaries out of some sort of flowering plants. By the way I don't know what "bladuds" means.  Any ideas?

One of our big stops in Bath are the Roman baths.  Not long after the Romans invaded Britain in 42 AD, they discovered the natural hot water springs that the city is named for.  They turned the city into a pagan place of worship and relaxation. Since then people have come to Bath for healing, holiday and religious celebrations.  There is a very interesting tour of the Roman baths, just in case you make it to Bath yourselves one day.  Our camera died not long after we got into the tour, but here are a couple of pictures we thought you might like to see.

David thinks he may be related to this fellow.

Here is the recon- structed opening to the temple of Sulis Minerva, the goddess worshiped here by the Romans. They adopted the name of this goddess from the local people who were here when the Romans conquered Britain. The Romans were famous for that sort of thing.

One of Bath's famous citizens is a woman named Sally Lunn.  She is famous for her buns--not her derriere-- I'm talking about bread. So we had dinner at Sally Lunn's house, now a restaurant and a museum.  It is one of the oldest houses in Bath.  The buns are light, tasty and we're looking for the recipe.  They were delicious.  So when you come to Bath, look up Sally Lunn and her buns.