Finally, a respite from the hot, sultry weather. The day dawned grey and windy with the promise of rain evident from the coolness of the air. Linda and I decided to go to Bath for the day and set off at nine o’clock across the fields towards Upton Lovell. The air was clear and fresh, the rain still a long way off.
We paused on the bridge across the Wylie River behind Upton Lovell to comment on the very Englishness of the scene. A smooth, dark river flowed beneath ancient oak trees with the lawn of a mansion house sloping gently down to the water’s edge. Downstream, where the river emerged from the canopy into the open land, a field of ridge and hollow strips gave a clue to the ancient farming practices that had survived all the changing years.
Up on the main road, the traffic hurtled by at an alarming speed and we were glad when the bus came along and whisked us away. As we travelled through the towns and villages along the way to Bath — Westbury, Trowbridge, Bradford-on-Avon and localities in between — the bus gradually filled up with an interesting mixture of people. Old folks with bus passes, young mothers with babies and brats, dropouts and mutants who appear to support the theory that many people in the West Country are inbred, and an assortment of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.
Bath sits in a deep valley surrounded by steep, densely wooded hills. Its rows of Palladian houses (in neoclassical style after A. Palladio, Italian architect, died 1580) reach up the hills in long rows of orderly terraces. It began to rain as we arrived in the centre of the city, gently at first, then steadily increasing to a gentle downpour. We wandered the streets, browsing in shops and shop windows, lingered in a tea room overlooking the river, and caught an afternoon bus back to Warminster.
The evening too was grey and wet, and sitting in the Mason Arms pub, we decided to have a curry and take a taxi home. And that is what we did. Back in the cottage, I sat up reading Deluge by Richard Doyle, an account of the devastating effects of a tide surge would have on London if the Thames barrier wasn’t there. Linda rang Helen for a chat, but there wasn’t much in the way of transworld gossip that would needs to be recorded here.
CurseOfTheTraveller 