Bath, England! oh, and Avebury...

Bath, UK

If your coming to England, Bath is one of your main stops on your tour.  It's about an hour outside of London via train to the west.  Situated in a neat area of farm land and rolling hills, Bath is a great example of Georgian architecture with some Victorian flair!  Not to mention the Roman Baths, hence the name.  There is a lot to see and do in Bath but Mike and I found it to be more of a crazy tourist town then any other we had been to. In the summer you can expect lots of crowds and lines (or as they say here que).

Actual Roman Bath 57AD

The story of how Bath was founded is a tricky one. Some say that a man with leprosy was cast out of his village. He took his sick pigs away from the village and saw that they were rolling in hot watery mud and all of a sudden the pigs were cured. So the man jumped in the mud and rolled around and all of a sudden he was cured of leprosy. He then went back to his village and they made him king.  This is a little off the wall... So what we do know is that Bath is situated on 3 natural fault lines that create hot springs. The Romans found these hot springs and thought it was a gift from the Gods.  So they made Bath houses around the springs and showed the locals how to get clean.

Avebury rock circle

I would say Bath is worth about a day of proper sightseeing.  But with side trips you can make it a little longer. Near bath is Stonehenge, The Cotswolds, Stratford upon Avon, Avebury, etc. It's right in the middle of a bunch of tourist destinations.  We happened upon Avebury because it was covered under our National Trust membership and boy did we luck out!

Avebury

Avebury is a prehistoric rock formation that is way larger than Stonehenge. It is more massive and much older. About 1300 years older than Stonehenge.  And it's an open space so unlike Stonehenge you can walk right up to the rocks and touch them. Pagans still get married here and believe that there is all kinds of powers in the area.  There were also talks of lay lines or as Christians would know them as the St. Michael and St. Mary lines. I think they are energy lines that run straight through England and pass right over the Avebury site and Stonehenge.  In any case, it was really neat and a must see for anyone that feels like seeing a pile of rocks (as Mike would say) and some sheep.