Oh boy, I was finally going to see something it was impossible to see in the US!Chris Ihling, my travel companion from work, and I had spent the first week in Cheltenham doing our 'orientation'. This pretty much involved talking to the hotel desk personnel, meeting a few locals, having a few drinks, verifying that the City Centre was indeed a mall, replete with our standard US stores and a few twists (TK Maxx instead of TJ (?)) and wandering around trying to find something ketchupless to eat. He had an in in that his aunt and uncle-in-law live about 10 miles away, in the town of Gloucester (Glaw-stah, actually abbreviated on signs and maps 'Glos'). During the first week, since Chris had control of the car, I pressed and pressed to see Stonehenge. Come on, it was only an hour or hour and a half away! It's FAMOUS! My kids want a keychain! Think of the picture opportunities! Chris grumbled and (I think) tried to figure a way out of it, he talked to his uncle about it. His aunt and uncle had lived here 35 years and not seen that 'pile of rock.' But his uncle and Chad from work, in Phoenix, did mention a wonderful (tourist) town called Bath, built over a Roman ruin, also south of Glawstashih. Well... ok. How long would it really take to see a pile of rocks? The point was to see it, get some background, touch the stones, take a picture, and maybe remember something humbling from the Stonehenge experience. Incorporate it into my character. Figure out some rationale as to -why- it was. We ended up convincing each other that we could do both Stonehenge and Bath in the same day. No time like the present, and Chris had obligations coming together for the weekend of the 13th and 14th, so we decided on Saturday the 6th.
OK. So we over-oriented ourselves on Friday night. I was still adjusting to a new country, as was Chris, and we checked out a couple of the 'clubs' in town. The beers snuck up on him, the drinks snuck up on me, and the jetlag magnified both. We did have a great time, and hit most of the high points in Cheltenham, or so we had been told. Repeatedly. The bottom line is that, when I rolled out of bed around 10 and called Chris on the phone, the conversation went something like this:
"Hey, man. You up?"
"Ugh."
"So what time do you want to get going today? How's 1?"
"Ugh. How's *not*."
"Yeah, what you say take it easy today and get going early tomorrow?"
"Yeah, ok. Going to get breakfast later. I'll let you know, probably about 1130."
"All right, man. Take it easy."
We left the hotel on foot Saturday around 1130, as Chris had mentioned. Our best bet for hunting down a breakfast should be in the City Centre, on High Street, just a block or so south, and then along the next 4 or 5 blocks west. It was a moderately cloudy day, the forecast called for continued cloudy-and-cool. No rain, though, which was good. I'd heard England could get a bit moist at times. We traipsed down and then back up and then back down the High Street, looking in the windows and restaurants. We tried and failed in two different places to feed our faces. Our first attempt was at the Slug and Lettuce (! - no points on the legs competition there!). Gregg, our bartender at the Copa the previous evening, where I had some amazing fish and chips and Chris had a remarkably good beef-n-yorkie wrap (according to him), had mentioned that the food was good at the 'Slug', right across the alley. What the hell, we gave it a shot. Threading our way in through the door, the sight and sound of the large crowd en-mange encouraged us, some of whom were even eating griddle-cakes, others eggs, a few some battered and fried thingies. The Slugette hostess assigned us a 2-top next to a couple of ladies having a rather animated natter about shopping, men, and the holiday season. After seating ourselves and ordering our coffees, americano for me, latte for Ihling, we took a look at what our neighbors were eating. The older woman had a battered fish and flat-chips (almost crisps, but they looked hand-cut), an admittedly alarmingly small portion, but artfully arranged with some kind of yellow and red chutney, an orange remoullade-looking dressing, and a microgreen and arugula salad served alongside. (NOTE: You will see 'rocket' and 'aubergine' for arugula and eggplant respectively in the UK). Her younger companion had obtained a streaky bacon and yellow cheddar baguette-hoagie thing that was massive. Browned pork-fat marbling pink-charred meat hung over the sides, and tiny rivulets of grease were running down the girl's arm, to the elbow. She looked very happy with her tribute to haute cuisine anglaise, having fastidiously picked some of the fat-edges from the slivers of porkbelly and set them precariously along the rim of her plate. All right! Bacon makes me happy. When our server came back to deliver the coffees, Chris asked after the breakfast specials. A blank look. "Oh, I'm sorry, sir, but we stopped with the breakfast about a half-hour ago." What? We sent her off, begging more time to consider the offerings of the day on the lunch specials list. Huddled in coversation, we came to the decision. Pay for the coffees, and trek on through the mall, trying to find something more suitable. After all, there were 10,000 people swarming around this City Centre. There was certainly a market for breakfast! Re-flagged the waitress down, paid, tipped, off we went. We also noticed that the Copa wasn't serving breakfast at this time either. Man! Dredging through my memories and limited experience with navigating Cheltenham, I 'reminded' Chris that the Hogshead, next to the Varsity Pub (another of our infamous stops the previous evening) had had a sign out for all-day English breakfast. He was dubious, but I was insistent, and it was only a couple of streets over, right on the High Street! All right. We walked on down, against the crowd, the current around 1215 being 'westward' apparently. Sure enough, a big-old Ruby-Tuesday style plastic outdoor banner announced "All-Day Breakfast from 5.50 GBP." (well, the 'L'ish pound sign, not 'GBP'). 7am-10pm, with pictures of eggs, ham, sausages, coffee mug, the works! Ignoring my triumphant smirk, Ihling led the way into the common room of the Hogshead (does that count for legs?). We stood around awkwardly, not quite into the groove of food-and-pub etiquette, waiting for a spot on a common table to open up. Eventually, we approached the bartender to order our breakfast. 'Oi, fellas, sorry, but we're out of breakfast.' I think Chris was in shock. I know that I was flabbergasted. Out? Like, no eggs in the house? No pork products? Out of beans or tomatoes or bread? No 'oi, fellas, we're out of bacon/eggs/ham/white bread, we'll have to substitute pancakes/bacon/ham/extra eggs/potatoes/tomatoes/mueslix/corn pops.' No. Just 'out'. I was still reeling from the concept of what 'out' meant at noon when you have all-day breakfast advertised when I found myself back on the High Street. We must have wandered back out in a daze. This particular experience proved a very fertile example when trying to explain English culture to Americans. Chris and I chuckled about it for days (weeks) afterward. I still do.
Back to the Great Breakfast Hunt. We were about ready to give up and get a lunch by this point. But stubborn and incredulous ruled this day. OK. During our runs back and forth, we had passed a few cafes and pastie shops that offered premade breakfasts. The pastie is an ostensibly Cornish perfection. If a New Yorker saw one, at least someone with my background (or a New Jerseyite, with Chris's), he or she'd think - "Oh, a calzone." It's a dough shell wrapped around a filling, all baked together, or partially precooked then baked, in the case of a raw-meat filling. However, the Cornish and Welsh have taken the concept to a new height (or low). You can obtain a pastie with just about any kind of gooey 'goodness' inside, from lamb mincemeat and mint to egg, sausage, bacon, and cheese (the 'walkout breakfast' pastie). I passed on the concept, not too keen on premade, sitting-in-the-window sandwiches. Chris opted in on the breakfast pastie, and procured it from a green-signed place proclaiming 'world famous cornish pasties'. He certainly took it like a trooper. The only comments I got during his experience with the roll was "Man, they put ketchup in it." and "Their ketchup is a lot sweeter than ours." I'm not a huge ketchup fan, so I was glad that I hadn't risked subjecting myself to a mass-produced, no-option sandwich. Him munching, me keeping a watch out for signage, we ambled through the mall acreage, noting a cafe here, a woolworth's there, a side-street with a likely pub... Hey! A blackboard! In front of Tailor's cosy house, a very nice ivy-covered tea-house-looking Victorian turned-pub, there was a chalkboard in the middle of the walk, with an arrow, pointing left, advertising 'Full Breakfast for 3.95'! We were confused for a short bit, there was only an office building apparent there, with a clothing shop in the lower floor, but wait! A staircase, about the width of a rain gutter, descending to below-street level! Chris discarded his pastie wrapper, and I led the way down the narrow stair to the basement-turned deli, a block and a half off the high street. There was barely enough room for one-way traffic. The door opened inward, and the smells of burnt toast and bacon enveloped us as we walked into the grease-saturated air of the diner/deli. Ha! I ordered the full monty from the counter, even going so far as to order 'fried bread' in place of the toast. After wandering and anticipating, I wanted an English Breakfast. Chris opted for the baguette bacon and egg sandwich. I said yes to all the options, damn the ramifications. And yes, to-go! Er.. yes, take-away! After an eternity of a wait (about 20 minutes), I was presented with my doubled styrofoam package, my 'mate' having received his sandwich about 10 minutes prior. I shrugged off the implications of the timing. Maybe the griddle was really small and could only handle one egg or one slice of bacon at a time. We thanked the lady profusely and had a little laugh about the difficulty of finding breakfast on the High Street, and assured her that we'd be back! Back up the steps, to a bench, to eat and people-watch. I removed the two layers of cellophane holding my bundle of prospective joy together. Is this food? (Whole) canned tomatoes chased Heinz baked beans around in a runny soup of bean whey and tomato juice, coating the balance of the plate with a thin film of sweet/gummy residue. Just about everything tasted like just about everything else. OK, the eggs were well-cooked and tasty, way more flavorful than anything I'd had resembling it them the US, 'organic' or 'free-range' or standard, orange yolk the only part of the breakfast that smiled at me, but they were sogged. The streaky bacon was pretty good too, once I pushed the useless tomatoes and beans off of it. The bangers were unnecessarily 'bready' on the inside somehow, and fried bread ended up being a thick slice of white soaked in bacon grease (like submerged a vat of drippings and let sit, think egg in french toast), then fried, or possibly just deep-fried in drippings. It may have been my choice of serving media, but of the 2/3 that ended up homogenized in taste, I gave up after about half. I discarded my rubbish, clapped my hands together, and said - 'ok, what next?' Next was to hit one of the sports merchandise stores we'd passed. Chris needed to pick his boys up some gear. I went in, browsed, then left after a bit to enjoy my tunes on the mp3 player and get a little recon of the High Street. We met back up fortuitously as Chris was making his way back to the hotel, literally coming from opposite directions of the same corner! He was going to go back and recover, I said that sounded like a great idea to me, and we'd meet up a little later on for dinner at Storyteller.
Storyteller had come highly recommended by a couple of the guys at work, as well as from the online Cheltenham site. We had attempted to go there the previous (Friday) night, but arrived too late for lunch, too early for the dinner seating. Since we were hungry, we had gone to Copa instead and been pleasantly surprised there. But we wanted to chase down the 'good stuff'. We queued at the hostess podium inside the door, in a low cozy dining room, seating for about 30 or so, at about 6:20. It was already pretty busy, some of the tables moved together to accommodate Christmas parties and gatherings of Gloucestershirians. The maitre fussed a little bit when we showed up and asked for a table for two, doing some straining mental calculations in his head, and finally said he could seat us, if we would promise to be gone by 7:30. On the way to the table, I mentioned to Chris, stage-whispered really, that our ETD was completely dependent on the serving speed. He shushed me and informed me that the way they do things here involved giving up a table for dinner for an entire evening, in general, if you have the table, then it's yours for the night. Okay, I like that laid-back approach. We were hustled through the cozy area, up the stairs, to a beautiful modern greenhouse seating room. The light rain that had just started trickled down the glass roof, pulling our attention to a glass wall, with a courtyard just-visible outside in the dim. Very classy, very pretty, comfortable. Browns and greens, with bright southwestern green or pink or orange picture frames. We sat along the wall, and the server thoroughfare to the kitchen passed right next to our table, so once the drink order was placed, we got to see charming, vibrant plates of food whiz by on their way out to diners. Yellow and orange and blue and green ceramic plates and bowls were whimsically attired with roasts, ribs, root vegetables, chunks of meat, either thin or chunky soups, chips (steak fries), fries (shoestrings), and all sorts of tavern-style offerings. It all smelled great! The place wasn't saturated with stale beer vapor (like the pubs) nor filled with fryer-residue (like the diner). It smelled like roasts and rosemary and savory oniony vegetables. A nice date place, actually. The staff was attentive, our water, Chris's ginger ale, and my iced tea were all attended to. They laid out two different forks, a roast knife, a butter knife, and a set of spoons (tea, soup, table). Not fancy silverware, functional and honest, with wide sturdy bodies and stubby tines. My napkin was orange, Chris's was green. A classy, upscale place with a touch of fancy. Starters: He had the soup, and I had the chicken wings. The soup was to be smooth, a sweet-potato vegetable whizzer. The wings should have been 'jerked' with some chutney on the side. Both were acceptable, and well cooked. The chicken tasted a little gamey to my palate, in a whole-flavor way, like lamb, not bad, but I was sure [GJF: 2/2009 vindicated by now] that that was a byproduct of the English way to raise chickens. It was savory and good, but the jerk spice did not kick my ass, nor even poke me in the shoulder. The presentation was whimsical, as everything else was trying to be, a wrought-iron spiral cone lined with wax paper, into which the chicken wings were placed. The menu had encouraged me to use my hands for it (duh! American, here!) and I had. It came with a couple of wet naps. I exchanged a wing for a soup sample and got consensus on my analysis. The soup? Again, well-made, but a bit bland. I could taste all the vegetables in it, and I think they were roasted before pureeing, not stewed. It was smoky-sweet and savory. Needed salt. But good and definitely homemade. Chris puzzled over tiny hard knobules in his soup, like tomato-seeds or pit-pieces. I preferred the wings. When the starters were done and plates and paraphernalia whisked away, I took the opportunity to start people-watching. There were a couple of obvious Christmas or holiday get-togethers going on. Each person would take in turn their 'snappy' thing (looks like a huge tootsie roll) and get a buddy to hold one end while they pulled. Out would pop a hat, a toy, and a joke. What a wonderful tradition! I'd never seen this before. Since his wife had performed this ritual with her English family for her whole life, Chris took the lead in explaining all this to me. You can apparently find these things at Party City and the like in the US. Well, that's a holiday tradition in the making for the kids. What a cool thing! The mains came: Roast chicken and veg (him), and ostrich and roast veg (me). I had never had ostrich before, so when the waiter asked me how I wanted it, I said 'medium to medium-rare'. It was fantastic. A little less beefy than beef, but still more hearty than chicken. Definitely a red-meat flavor, mine was seared and seasoned along the outside, the pink/red center melted in my mouth like a filet. It complemented marvelously, along with the mild but peppered brown sauce it was served with (not drowned in!), the slightly-oniony parsnips and the strong leeks. Potatoes, I'm not a huge fan of, but they were ok. The veg were salted just right to make the crispiness stand out. Great meal. We exited the Storyteller and went back to the hotel, through the light drizzle. Considered going out to a pub, but we had the walk through the ages the next day, and I wanted to be up on time.
We ended up meeting up in the lobby around 9:00 or so. I had loaded detail maps of the route onto my phone, along with the step-by-step Google Map instructions. Chris decided to indulge in some cereal and juice, I had my coffee. After a while of staring at the tv, I went back to the
breakfast bar and gave it another once-over. The Marmite stared back at me, in its little heart-shaped packet. I know that I had tried vegemite in 7th grade, and I vaguely remembered its flavor, to my memory similar to the anchovies my mom had shoved in me when I was around that age too. But I know how tastes change and we grow up - I had grown to appreciate anchovies with crusty bread or in Caesar salad, and on the occasional pizza. Maybe the same would be true? I sat down, still preoccupied with the cheery little containers on the bar. I mentioned it to Chris. He didn't quite encourage me, nor did he discourage me. He simply stated that his wife often enjoyed marmite on her toast, being of English stock, and that he and his kids thought it was nasty. Oh, what the hell! I sauntered casually back over to the counter, selected a teaspoon and a packet, and then walked back to the table. I sat down and peeled back the foil lid. Dipped the spoon in, got a nice glob of the thick brown goo, and plup! Into the mouth it went. It rolled around, resistant to saliva. It was bitter, very beery, and sort of fishy, rich, and ultimately something I would eat, diluted in other foods or as an additive. Not bad, not inedible, but definitely not a star taste. An additive or supplement. Chris finished up, and I set the spoon and open packet in his bowl for collection by the cleanup crew. "Not gonna take one for the road?" Um, no, not that impressed. Ha.
The sun beamed down through the cloudless sky. It hit about 50 or 55 that day, but there were pockets of cold too. The trip southward to Stonehenge site passed pretty uneventfully, no major accidents or swerves, although I thought the drive through Cheltenham and Cirencester, on the left, with one side of the road packed with parked cars, would have been difficult for me or any other US-bred driver to navigate after only a few days driving. Chris assured me all was well, and despite a few of the bigger 'lorries' coming what seemed to be inches from his side-view mirror, smooth sailing. The maps were helpful, but the main-marked roads (A- routes), even though they were in bold or green or red lines on the map, sometimes became little lane-and-a-half side streets in the towns. And the roundabouts! I payed pretty close attention to the way the traffic followed (or to my naive experience, didn't) the customs here. I wanted to be prepared in case I would be driving someday on these roads. We chatted and whiled the drive away, ended up making a wrong-direction on the 'motorway' (like an interstate, no exits, speed limit infinity). After a three-mile detour, we turned around (a MASSIVE all-stop-lights roundabout) and headed back toward Stonehenge. Two or three rises later, it just popped up. I can't think of a better word, we came over a hill, the road curved right... and There. It. Was.
The main highway takes the best approach possible to this gargantuan 'pile of rock.' Our particular day's climate helped too. It had dropped to about 40 or 45 in the countryside and dried up, so it was crystal-clear from above and below. The hills surrounding the monument were a pale late-fall green, without trees in evidence, except maybe a few low scrub trees on hills far to the north and south, serving to separate the flocks of eggshell-colored sheep which grazed in pastures all around. Our timing put the sun at our backs (it was 11:00), but near its highest point in the day. So ultimately, we were treated to these charcoal-shaded blue-gray monoliths, standing in stark contrast to the pale green below and the robins-egg blue above. Looming. If 'to loom' were ever an active state, Stonehenge accomplishes it. Even from a quarter-mile away, at the 'offramp', these pillars just... are. Watching. The texture visible or tangible, even from that distance... you can see (feel?) the gray and blue flecks in the monoliths. It's like they know when we're there, or there's something making us feel their presence. Can you imagine what the Normans or the Romans thought when they came across this, sitting in the middle of bare hills? Just 20-foot tall fingers of stone, and their scaled rock crosspieces, reaching for the heavens while still seeming to encircle and support *something*, maybe not in this world? You can't mistake Stonehenge for a 'colosseum', even with only its outer ring up. It looks like a support structure. It looks like a temple. It looks purposeful, stoic, and serious. Built from enormous reserves of fear and duty. It's awesome and breathtaking in the fullest of every sense of those overused words.
There was a parking lot, overlooking a sheep pasture across the street from Stonehenge, and Chris navigated to it nicely, pulled into a spot. We piled out, grabbing cameras, hats, scarves, him fresh from Arizona's balminess and me from - well - Florida! He found the loo, I found the coffee stand. When we rendezvoued in front of the English Heritage Ticket Kiosk, he found me with an americano and a luxury mince pie. Blueberries, delicious. He gave me a look of slight envy. "That's a pretty good idea." I waited and slurped while he matched my latest acquisitions. We ambled to the kiosk, along with some French, German, and Arabic tourists, declining the yearly membership to English Heritage, and each of us received little 'audio guides'. These resembled old-school Sony Walkmans, but had a nice LCD screen and navigation buttons. The instructions were to punch in the code for each marked location on the walking tour to receive the audio supplement. We crossed under the road and made it to the Stonehenge grounds. As we approached, all of the details of the monoliths came clearer and clearer. The structure was self-similar, even strewn about by time's broom. The weird pillars (mined about 5000 years ago and brought from SE Wales by river and carried a few miles to the site) seemed to suck up the daylight. Chris had heard a rumor that they were warm to the touch... even though they had encircled the henge with a fence, there were still some outcroppings and individual stones that remained touchable. Maybe a touch warmer than the air... We circumnavigated the main ring, watching as a blind tour was herded into the circle to experience the sad majesty of this ancient tribute in the only ways they could (sound and touch). It would be like a 'Flatland' experience, the visuality of the 'henginess', being surrounded by the great guardians' menace, lost on the blind. We touched the 'heel stone', a marker whose shadow on the summer solstice would cast into the center of the monument, marking time and unknown other events to the ancients around their sacred ring. It was humbling and subduing. 5000 years ago, the forebears of the Celts put this together.
We're trying to piece together why, still. What's going to happen to our works?The cold began to bite us a little, and the absolute-wow of the henge faded some. In silent agreement, we walked back under the road, paused a bit in the gift shop, and traipsed through the parking lot to the car. I nodded at the sheep (they nodded back, of course), and then Chris and I repacked into the car and began the somewhat-shorter drive to Bath, probably the oldest tourist-purposed town I'd be likely to see in my life.
We wound our way along the road into the small city. From a distance, the thought "Oh, it's on a hill!" went through my head. Then it bacame, "Oh! It's built on hills?" The final verdict: "Holey crap, it's cut INTO a hill!" From across the river, we could see the terraces the buildings made, level after level, platforms staging their way up the hill, a monument to the perseverence of the Roman architects. Alleys and pathways cut their way through the mountainside, with buildings built over them, making tunnels from one sunlit platform to the next. Had it been the morning, the sun would have beat down directly on those faded pink buildings, washing them out and granting them a cool pearlescence. As it was, just after noon (about 1, maybe 1:30), the shadows played across the steep streets and into the town below, the buildings casting their silhouettes across the 'downtown' tourist area where the cathedral and springs lay. Across the river from our approach sprawled a rugby field, and its parking lot, blue bleachers surrounding the green 'pitch', with spectators milling about. It looked like a period change or the end of a match, by Chris's estimation. The road became a spiderweb of roundabouts and intersections, signs bidding us to Bristol, Wales, London, Portsmouth, the motorways, and other points for which we had no references. We followed the signs toward City Centre, recollecting that the Springs and Main Roman Ruin Of Interest were there. We decided to go as far downtown as we could and find a spot to park. The road narrowed progressively, remaining more-or-less straight, but cars queued against a wall sheering from the first ancient terrace, on the south (driver's) side of our one-way approach. A gap miraculously appeared, devoid of the forbidding double-yellow lines which indicate 'no parking, bub'. Chris paralleled the car in smoothly, choking his door a bit, but safe and sound. We climbed out, he squeezing past the stone wall, I trying to time the exit with the ebb and flow of the tourist traffic. The trunk prudently stowed our Stonehenge mementos, as well as my pack, with us just retaining the cameras for the (hopefully short) walk to the commercial heart of Bath.
Our recent Cheltenham orientations had educated us enough to realize that we had parked in the 'dodgy' bit, its sketchiness evidenced by the storefronts of low-rent burger stands, tire retreaders, carpet-cleaning establishments, and other worn out facades. The road wound into the 'nicer' bit, and the likes of Gap, Benetton, Starbucks, Costa, Ha!Ha! (a clean-lined TGI Friday-clone), popped up with more frequency. A cathedral on the right punctuated the border between the two sections, the sun playing through its spires, casting the silhouette into the canals on the left. On the water, old (really old) wharf buildings slumped against their newer cousins, a used-up fish market on the west of the canal, and the new Chamber of Commerce on the east. The Victorian-age stone structures joining the low-rent to high-rent across the water highlighted a wonderful juxtaposition of era and charm. Unfortunately, since it was Sunday, with a plummeting thermometer and mid-afternoon approaching, we didn't make time to explore, as we feared the imminent closure of our target sights. I did notice that many more independent eateries, freehouses, and pubs had retained their footing in Bath's center, as opposed to Cheltenham's. Signs with flavors like 'Saracen's Head Pub' (0, maybe 1 (average), used to have legs?) and 'The Pig and Fiddle' (4!) tantalized our curiosities and fueled our running commentaries. Lunch should be interesting, but again, sacrificed to Tourism for the moment...
The crowds massing on the sidewalks got some relief as our road finally dumped us into the openness of Bath's main central plaza. The pedestrians milled back and forth, filling the space, leaving Chris and I to make the circuit of the square, taking in our options. The Abbey stood on the left (east), and the Springs Museum directly to its right. The southeast artery feeding the plaza between the two had been closed to vehicles and boasted some wooden boxy alternately green and red-awninged kiosks. This bazaarlike vibe was slightly restrained by the straight English footpaths and territorial demarcations for the various stalls. The sign on the Abbey door indicated that the visiting hours on Sunday were from 4:30 to 5:30, so we were over two hours too early for that, and since the chill was beginning to sink in, we decided to head into the Springs for some shelter and an introduction to the why of Bath. After a short queue and polite demurral to join the English Heritage club (again), each of us was rewarded with an entry ticket and an audio guide. Same drill. If we were to notice a plaque near something of interest, we were welcome to simply key in the numbers and receive more prerecorded information. Bath's setup had a different twist, though. There were features for kids. Portions had tailored recordings from the points of view of children throughout Bath's ages. We were also very strongly admonished not to touch the water, or heaven forbid, drink it! However, paid samples would be available, appropriately sterilized and de-mineralized in the gift shop or Pump Room restaurant. Cameras stood silent guard at strategic locations and enforced the Verboten. This was to be a common thread throughout England. Passive surveillance is one of the accepted norms of English life, all rail platforms, government offices, most intersections, the odd stretch of residential or highway road, and many retailers perform the invaluable public service of recording a video profile of each English citizen's day to day activities. Anyway, I was a very short walk away from being in my first Roman ruin!
The folks in Bath had been very busy. There were archaeological excavations ongoing in the complex, expanding the ladies' and men's bathhouse 'wings' as they found more and more pools and benches and footrests beyond crumbling walls. The bathhouses extended like a spider from the central spring's pool, a great outdoor affair above which the entry path took us. Steams and scents rose from the water, not unpleasant at all, not a lime or suphur smell, but
mineraly. The cool air (maybe 38 by now) exaggerated the vapors rising from the pool, giving an aged and mysterious cast to the disintegrating benches and stones surrounding. The upper mezzanine, the walkway the tour started on, had been added to the complex after the Romans departed, by city-planners, so there was evidence of mismatch where the walls met the floors. Generous Roman stonework with wide arches and large rough fitted joints - walls accommodating the stones - met the English (Saxon/Norman/Victorian?) precision, small stones, fitted to wall shape. The tenants of Bath all wanted to make their mark on this magical place, with its late-fall mists. I listened to the audio at several spots along the walkway - Bath is the only hot spring known in England, it had been occupied continuously since Roman times (no kidding!)... The source of the water was behind the public large pool, off in a corner of the complex, and I could make out (or so I thought) ever-so-slight motions in the beautiful emerald pit. Still flowing. Later I was to find out that the spring is actually channeled through a combination of Roman stonework, Victorian lead pipes, and modern pumps, and the flow is directed to the courtyard, where it had been before, in a reconstruction. The curators needed to shut off certain ducts in order to drain the male/female bath houses below for excavation and restoration, and they also shunted some water off for use in the Pump Room and for tourist sales and scienctific analysis. We proceeded into the main museum portion, which occupied the descent from the mezzanine to the water level. Here we were treated to displays of Roman coinage, thrown in by petitioners 2000 years ago and recovered by Victorian archaeologists. Also of particular pride for recovery were pot shards, left as tribute and vendette by worshippers of the goddess thought patron of the spring, Sulis-Minerva. Minerva [a female Apollo - music, poetry, education, warriors] was of course the 'daughter' of Jove, and Sulis was the goddess of wisdom. They were conflated (identified together, as one) in the Bath region, and most of Roman Britain. The translations provided for the Latin texts proved mostly hilarious, but they also resonated with us 'modern people' too. For every prayer for a good crop or for the health of a sickly child, there were 10 asking for the return of a lover or the punishment of the one who tempted the lover away (or both). Minerva must have been busy through the years. After the display of artifacts, and a massive scale-model of the complex's projected expanse in its prime (and hopefully after the excavations completed), we were shown some of the restorations being undertaken by English Heritage. Ubiquitous was the Gorgons-head motif, which the audio claimed was associated with Jove in his Minerva-fathering aspect - I may need to revisit Bullfinch, I don't recall the Gorgon in that way. It peered out above the altars and entryways, around the altar stone, from the bases of columns. A bronze Minerva had also been unearthed, and painstakingly restored. The patina still marred her bronze, but the exquisite details... wow! The age of this place, not to mention the effort rebuilding, had me thinking back to Stonehenge, putting me out of the moment while Chris explored the bath chambers. I sat on a 2000-year-quarried stone slab and set my feet into the (now-) empty men's baths. Look at all the - *tiles* even - that they've recovered! And the coins! And the writing! Of a known language, to boot! And we know that this isn't even close to a fraction of enough to really tell us what went on here. How can we ever think we'll reconstruct silent Stonehenge? We left the bathhouses behind, and made our way to the gift shop. I think both Chris and I salivated over the candy bars there, but held back. Time for lunch.According to the time on the way out of the Museum, we still had about 45 minutes until the Abbey would open, but I believe that each of us was individually planning ways on getting out of that venture. We made a small detour through the bazaar stands, admired some of the goods, genuine Turkish swaths of cloth for 60 GBP, about the same price as a roundtrip to Istanbul would run. We passed on the tourist goods, thankyouverymuch. Since we only knew one road in the town, we decided to wind back to that to find a likely eatery. As we crissed and crossed the narrow victorian roads, I gawped and admired the Really Old Town "Hey! That's a carving of Queen Victoria in that building! What's H.I.M? D'oh!" [Her Imperial Majesty]. A bike cyclist or perhaps a messenger, looking tired from her day, was preparing to pull out into traffic. We stopped her, "Excuse me, miss, but where's a good pub where we could get
something to eat, maybe something traditional?" She very pleasantly set her kickstand back down and directed us back down the road we had come, away from the Centre, to the 'Bell'. Sounded good. Releasing her to carry on her ride, Chris and I walked back southwestward, back toward the car. About a half-mile further on, we got into a small discussion about whether she had told us to take the fork up the hill, or continue straight the way we had come. We eventually determined that if the 'Bell' had been as far as the car or past it, we would have noticed it on the way in, so took the steep fork up to the first terrace. Another half-mile. Almost another. "OK, I think that we're not getting anywhere," and I ducked into a newsstand to ask for directions. Apparently, the Bell was on the lower road, but still another half-mile further. Not to worry though, there were stairs down shorly along this street. "Stairs down?" Yes. We kept going, chugging along, rubbing hands across our faces and themselves. Eventually, about a quarter-mile further, sure enough, a hole was cut into the right side of the road, with an ancient staircase, the steps worn from centuries upon centuries of water flow. "Wow! I bet this is a trip when it freezes!" We picked our way down the washed-out steps, taking the wall for support, marveling at its narrowness and the way it had been cut through the hillside. Sure enough, after veering left at the bottom and continuing along the wall ("Hi, Car!"), we finally came to the Bell.The inside of the Bell pub looked like it had just recovered from a massive party. Tables had favors and the leavings of the snappy Christmas thingies like I had seen at Storyteller the previous evening, people were lined up at the bar or lining up to leave, and we were informed that the menu was 'not ready' for evening meals. It looked like a really cool hangout though, and we couldn't fault our messenger for the freezing walk or the disappointment. So, after a quick chat with a couple of fellows standing outside smoking, we were off again. One of the dudes had said that the best burgers in town could be found at the burger stand right across from where we parked, but neither Chris nor I were much in the mood for a stand-up meal. We'd been on our feet all day and it was time to relax. Ambling back down our favorite road, we came in sight of Saracen's Head, the Pig and Fiddle, and Belushi's American Bar. Where would you go?
We decided on the Pig. In we went. The tavern's interior was poorly-lit, rugby and football matches dotted the walls via the multiple televisions set back into their wooden frames. We skirted the long bar, with its chrome and brightwork, and sat at a functional but blocky barstool-table setup. Chris went up and ordered a couple of dinner drinks and asked after the specials. When he came back with my Pepsi, he motioned to the chalk board: "Roasts, Beef,
Pork, Chicken, all Trimmings." I opted for the pork, Chris the beef. I took the duty of going up to order the meals, and noticed a series of US state car tags nailed into the crossbeams on the archways between the Great Room and the side dining areas - Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, and a few more. I asked the bartender, "Hey, are you guys collecting these? Because I don't see a Florida or an Arizona up there!" He got pretty excited and, after he wrote down my order, sent me back to the table with the address of the place, in case Chris or I had some extras or knew people with some to send them. It was a fine place, communal, friendly, and cozy. I went to the loo, and when I came back, Chris took his opportunity to do the same. While I was stranded, I popped outside for some air and to grab a photo of the place. On my way back in up the narrow stair to the Great Room, a Scot (I'm guessing from his accent and kilt) blocked my way. He was bent over the cigarette machine, punching repeatedly and swearing at it to 'gi' me mah [something]...'. I guess he must have caught me out of the corner of his eye, because he straightened up, and after a little bit steadying himself and a quick stumble and belch, he gave me a smile. Something absolutely incomprehensible came out of him, but I laughed. He laughed back, thumped the machine again, and thumped me as I went by. Friendly enough. Ha. The food was good, warming, edible. Nothing particular to write home about, but it worked well enough to get us paid and exited and walked back to the car.Leaving Bath wasn't too much of a trick. To the North and East, there are only two routes (both go northeast, and both come together a couple of times along the way). We followed the least direct one, got a couple of blocks and a mountain top out of the way, but since it wasn't icy, the 20-25 degree descent back to the main road didn't cause too many problems. I could swear I smell the brakes burning after the last whoooooooeeeeee ride down the hillside. Onto the motorway! Our path back to Cheltenham led past a Burger King. The three slices of roast after a day's hiking and climbing and learning just weren't enough [for Ihling]. We caved in and stopped, Chris getting his Angus Special Superdeedooper, and I tried a double-order of the Chili-Cheese bites, which we don't get in the US. Not *spicy*, but pretty good, like velveeta with mild chiles. Fried. I tasted them for quite a while on the way back. It got progressively dimmer along the A435 back to Cheltenham, and we had had a full day with a lot of input to process, so the conversation was just more-or-less comfortable silence. What little we talked about were just companionship noises, meant to while the drive away. The parking garage next to the Holiday Inn came up. We got our access ticket, parked, and walked to the lobby.
"So what do you want to do tonight?"
"Man, I wanna rest. And I wanna watch the football game."
"Me too. Let's see if anywhere has it on tonight."
But that's another story.
Facebook: Album "The 'Henge"
Facebook: Album "bAHHHth"
[GJF: Placeholder 02/09/2009]
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