Bath and Cornwall

This morning we left Cardiff and crossed the Bristol Channel and River Severn back into England.  The funnel-shaped channel and estuary combine to create what is called a tidal bore - the Severn Bore - forcing water upstream as far as Gloucester.  Steve told us that there was a 40-foot difference between low and high tide, and he had heard that surfers can actually surf upriver.

We arrived in Bath, one of the few places we had visited before in England on our trip 15 years ago.  It is a popular destination, and deservedly so, with its perfectly preserved 18th Century Georgian architecture and buildings constructed of honey-colored limestone.

The narrow stone-paved streets are everywhere, pedestrian-friendly and inviting exploration.  It was an overcast day and we enjoyed exploring an area still familiar in our memory.  It reminded me of Prospero asking Miranda in The Tempest (which I have been re-reading),

But now is it

That this lives in my mind?  What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

The hot springs feeding the Baths were “discovered” in AD 60-70 by the Romans, but it was believed that Celts worshiped here earlier; the water is a soothing 46 °C (114.8 °F).

The site was re-designed in the 18^th century, which was the date of all of the Georgian buildings now standing on the site.

The water is no longer used for bathing, and visitors were cautioned not to touch it; a dangerous type of amoeba was discovered here several years ago.  We needed no caution - the water did not look inviting.  The same hot water can be enjoyed in other places nearby.  

There was a beautiful bust of Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom (and also, parenthetically, strategic warfare).

And there were other lovely statues dating from the 18th century as well.  

The especially fine Bath Abbey stood diagonally across the street from the baths, a Church of England parish that had the long history of so many of these places of worship - founded in the 7th century, reorganised in the 10th century, and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries.

From somewhere in "the dark backward and abysm of time," we remembered eating a pub lunch in Bath 15 years ago at a place called The Crystal Palace, and after all of this time it was still there.  The young lady who brought us our lunch enjoyed that story, although she would have been a toddler at the time.

From Bath we journeyed to Plymouth to the southwest, through flat land along the Bristol Channel at first where hay was being harvested, hay bales in other fields waiting to be gathered in.

And then we were climbing through hilly country, the lower extent of the Cotswolds.  As we approached Plymouth, Steve gave us a highly-detailed description of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.  English ships sailed from Plymouth to decimate the fleet of 130 Spanish ships, but not before the famous game of "bowls" or lawn bowling by Sir Francis Drake could be completed.  The game, dating to the 13th century, was hugely popular in 1588, and legend has it that when the Armada was sighted in the channel, Drake coolly insisted on finishing his game (which incidentally, he lost) before taking on and defeating the mighty fleet.  Some scholars think it had more to do with waiting for the tide, but I like to think the legend is true.

We passed the ruins of Charles Church in Plymouth, which was bombed during World War II; it has been left in ruins as a memorial to those killed during air raids on the city, and perhaps as a sober warning of the terrible destruction wrought by warfare everywhere.

After arriving in Plymouth, we crossed the River Tamar to Cornwall by means of something I had never encountered before, a chain ferry.  The Torpoint Ferry has been in service since 1791; three separate ferries, side by side, operate by pulling themselves on heavy chains across the river - taut chains in front, slack chains behind which sink to the bottom to allow shipping movement in the river.  

Cornwall had some of the prettiest countryside we had driven through, rolling hills between green fields where cattle were grazing.

As we approached the Cornish coastline, the road narrowed, looking down precipitous slopes to the water below.  On the far horizon we could see a tiny shape, a ferry crossing the English Channel to France 80 miles away.

At one point, we came around a curve and unexpectedly encountered a coach traveling in the opposite direction.  After an amicable pause while the drivers seemed to communicate in some unknown way, our driver Karl slowly began creeping in reverse along the road; a mistake of a foot on the right would have meant tumbling a long way into cold waters.  We breathed a sigh of relief as the other coach passed and Karl received a round of applause for some of the best driving we had seen on this trip.

Some of the little towns tucked in the coves below us resembled the fictional Portwenn in the BBC program Doc Martin (the series is actually filmed in Port Isaac some 50 miles away).

I could almost picture the irritable Doc marching down the steep street on his way to an emergency, surgical bag in hand, while shooing away a friendly dog.

At last we arrived at sea level, and it turned out we were in Cremyll, just across the River Tamar from Plymouth; we had taken a long, circuitous, and very scenic route to The Edgcumbe Arms, a historic pub in one of the prettiest settings in England.

After a hearty dinner, we all stood outside soaking up the tranquility.  Stalwart Karl had returned to Plymouth by the same route he had taken to get here, while we waited for a ferry – not a chain ferry this time, but a small vessel approaching in the gathering dusk - to take us back across the river to our hotel for the night.