Road Trip! - Bath

After nearly two years of living in the UK, I can finally report that Jason and I have seen more of this country than just Cambridge and London. We're just back from an exciting five-day road trip with his parents! Last Monday, we took the train down to Heathrow where we met up with John and Terry who arrived on a 7.30AM flight. Being the troopers that they are, they decided they didn't want to bother with taking some time to recover from the jet-lag, so we set out on our adventure immediately.

Setting out from London (A) we planned to visit Bath (B), spend the night in a castle (C), explore the Cheddar Gorge (D), hike in Exmoor National Park (E), and see Stonehenge (F):


After meeting John and Terry at the airport, our first stop was to pick up a rental car. We had booked an automatic so we wouldn't have to concentrate on shifting and driving on the left, but when we arrived at Europcar (not impressed, by the way) we were told that we would have to either settle for a manual or wait an unspecified amount of time for an automatic to arrive. So, with great trepidation, I agreed to try my hand (ha!) at left-handed manual driving. I had to chuckle when I saw this picture of my white-knuckle driving and apparently, according to everyone else, I actually look relatively relaxed in this picture compared to some of the driving they witnessed!


I was pleasantly surprised to discover that shifting with my left hand wasn't nearly as tricky as I had feared it would be. What did cause some confusion, however, was a gear layout that I had never encountered before:


When I saw this I was immediately concerned, worrying that if I wasn't careful, I'd end up throwing the car in reverse when I was actually trying for first. So, for about the first 100 miles of our journey (which included about 20 minutes of stop and go freeway driving), every time I went for first, I'd carefully find "reverse" and then move one spot to the right to hit "first." This seemed to work just fine, although I remember thinking that we must have not gotten the best car because it didn't provide the smoothest of rides. While passing through the construction area that led to the 20 minutes of stop and go driving, we also all commented on how bad the asphalt that they were laying smelled.

Not long after passing through the construction, we decided to make a quick bathroom stop. This set me up for the first situation in which I would actually need to use reverse. As I put the car in reverse and slowly began to back out of our parking spot, we instead moved forward. After some messing with the gear shift, we discovered that to get into reverse, I actually needed to press a button while shifting all the way to the top left. Slowly everything started to click as I realized that I had been starting from THIRD GEAR - repeatedly - for nearly 100 miles! No - that wasn't asphalt that we had been smelling, it was clutch! And yes - the car actually provided a smooth ride when started from first! Boy did I feel like a dummy. I think it was a small miracle that the clutch wasn't completely shot. But, I did have to give myself a tiny pat on the back for my expert manual driving skills - honestly, it takes some talent to repeatedly start a car from third without stalling it, right??

Once I got the shifting figured out, we had a relatively smooth drive into Bath. There we visited the ancient Roman baths. These street level buildings were constructed in the 19th century:


If you look very closely in this picture, you can actually see the gases bubbling up from the hot springs:


The original Roman baths actually existed below these "modern day" street level structures and were built between 60 and 360 AD. Today when you visit the baths, you can still see canals built by the romans to direct the hot springs:


After touring the baths, we wandered around the city a bit, enjoying all of the amazing architecture. I really liked Pulteney Bridge - one of only four bridges in the world with shops across the full span on both sides (similar to Ponte Vecchio in Florence!).


Jason didn't trust me to get the shot without falling over...


A bit more exploring in Bath and we headed off for Thornbury where we were booked to spend the night in a castle! It was definitely an experience. More on that soon!