Monday, April 23, 2012

A nice normal Sunday. Plus Romans and lanes.

There was a couple of days in Oxford. The river and the colleges and the spires make nice photos. It's a lovely place to walk around. Then we spent a day driving between Oxford and Bath via Chipping Norton, which is a scenic country drive through the Cotswolds and sheepy little villages.

Our current home is a b&b called church farm in corsham. It's very cute and the breakfast is brilliant!

Today we went to church at widcombe baptist in bath. Getting there was like finding. Needle in a haystack. Bath is really not a place for driving and parking. The ministers wife suggested that we come back for evening church and then the car could stay parked at the school all afternoon which was a good offer. Evening church was really encouraging, there were baptisms and testimonies and the singing was hearty and the sermon was good. During the afternoon we split up and wandered. Like Oxford, Bath has lovely lanes to explore. It has long rows of terraces all yellowy grey stone. They curve slightly along the streets. There are also the main stunning circle streets. I kept wishing there were no cars parked along the streets because they ruined the effect a lot. So anyway, I love curving terraces and lanes, and Bath has them both!

The roman baths were interesting and beautiful, the assembly rooms were impressive, the fashion museum was well done, the Jane Austen centre was not very good. There was a roman army historical display in front of the royal crescent with trebuchets which I missed seeing used and all these tools for farming and medicine. A centurion showed me how the Romans had a circle saw to cut a hole in a skull to relieve pressure. He thought I had an Australian accent but not a very broad one.

I had a sausage roll for 80p for lunch, and a pasty on special for £1 at the end of the day. The end of the day was lovely, there was still plenty of light, shops shut and no crowds. Very pleasant.

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