Bath, United Kingdom

This morning we enjoyed a cooked English breakfast again before setting off and adding a couple of items to our itinerary. We had intended to perhaps look at more Cotswolds before driving to Bath and spending time in Bath, or resting (really?) but we saw that Stratford on Avon was very close and on the way to Warwick Castle which in total was a further 15 minutes, making it only about 40 minutes drive detour before a 2 hour drive to Bath. Warwick Castle comes highly recommended as the top one to visit in England so having car, we travelled.

Stratford on Avon is of course the home of Shakespeare and we made a very quick stop off in the town centre to view his birth place. The town was very full of tourists and for the first time we saw groups of Asian tourists in some numbers. After taking a quick photo of the outside we made our way down to the river where we saw some canal boats and ‘canal signs’ which indicated the number of locks you had to go through to reach a destination. We then walked a couple of street loop through the older part of town – or rather city. We were quite surprised at the number of older heritage buildings it has. In particular were a lot of half timbered buildings which are the white ones with black wood on the outside and some even had decorative patterning on the wood along with carved features. It certainly looks like a place worth visiting and exploring. You can visit Anne Hathaway’s birth house too, but we really did not have the time.

When we got to Warwick we parked at a parking station in town as its half the price of the ones at the castle (tip from RS) and then had a quick lunch at Subway including a cuppa for under £10. Over here you can buy just meat balls and sauce with melted cheese in a pottle for £1.75, and a little nachos with cheese £1.50 – around the same amount, which is what I had, and Vern and a pulled pork 6 inch. Another tip from RS books is that if you buy your tickets for the castle at the information centre TI, you only pay £15 each, instead of £23 each. The TI is about 5 minutes walk from the castle. Go figure that one!

The castle itself was really good, expensive but good. It is a 14th and 15th century fortified shell, holding an 18th/19th century royal residence. The cash poor, asset rich Earl of Warwick hired Merlin Entertainments (theme park developers) to wring maximum tourist dollars out of his castle. What they have done is turn it into a medieval themed day out for families with lots of interactive displays and games (which you have to pay extra for some). In the lower rooms that you can visit they have furnished it fully with precious family items and placed life size wax figures in with voice recordings of day to day life events going on, including servants talking to each other. It is so realistic you feel that you are walking into someones personal room, and have to do a double take to remind your self its wax and recordings! For example, there are two of the family members talking in the bedroom about a suitor, in the library room the men are talking hunting and political/royal events coming up and so on.

There was also fantastic armoury and weaponry – with two rare 16th century horse amour one from Germany and one from Italy. The photo of Vern is with the largest Narwhal tusk on display in the UK and the big pot he is standing next to was a large ‘punch’ bowl – or booze bowl for parties and get togethers. They have birds of prey exhibits and we just saw a condor who was trying to boost it at the end – gosh they are scary huge – bigger than a Turkey. You can also do a partial wall walk and climb one tower but I chickened out of the tower with the genuine excuse of lack of time, but it was also hideously narrow and twisty and one way ….

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit and could have spent more than the 2 hours we did there, but we were running late to get to our B&B within its check in times. The drive to Bath was mainly motorways and should have gone nice and smoothly but we missed our turn off due to it coming up too quickly and then missed a further exit on the correction route – 2 simple moves added on 30 minutes as it was 11 miles until we could hop off and re route again. MAN not what we felt like after a big day with 2hrs becoming 2.5hrs.

Our B&B is run by a ex pat Chinese lady called Ling and she has converted her Victorian period house into a modern Chinese influenced guest house. She is lovely and has two character cats that took a liking to Vern. Our room is small, but well appointed and immaculate and only up two flights of wide stairs, with the dining room on the landing below. Once checked in we walked an easy and pleasant 8 minutes into town to find some dinner. We saw a nice vegetarian restaurant but it was booked out so we wandered further and came across a “Jamie Oliver Italian’ restaurant. He has opened a chain of these around the place.

Vern just felt like a simple burger but I had an entree size seafood nero pasta which was squid ink pasta with mussels, squid, prawns and slow cooked octopus with an anchovy, caper, wine, chilli and tomato sauce. It was really delicious, and I also got a fancy healthy salad with candied beetroot, quinoa, fennel, pomegranate, avocado and creamy farmers ricotta, nuts and seeds and harissa dressing – which was nice but it had a bit too much mint that overpowered the other flavours a bit. Verns burger was a bit over cooked and dry for that level of restaurant, but we were too tired to complain.

We treated ourselves to dessert and whilst they looked great they were a bit disappointing. It was chocolate roll filled with mascarpone and Nutella flavour, the other a baked Sicilian cheesecake with Italian meringue on top served with lemon curd and blackcurrant coulis.

Bath is a small city, quite posh and feels very safe with many people wandering around still at night. We always enjoy a nice stroll back to our accommodation, feeling content like well fed felines. Bath with its pale golden stone buildings looked very glamorous in the early night light and I got the photo of the cathedral with the moon behind the cross and steeple – just hand held. You probably cant see the detail on travel pod, but it looks cool. Tomorrow is meant to be heat wave material of 28 degrees so we are looking forward to a great day out and about.