Easter Weekend trip to Bath and beyond

Aaron and I took advantage of the long weekend and with a couple of friends – Katie Bull and Phil Scanlon, drove up to Bath.

Apart from a few “interesting” moments – like the extremely arrogant guy behind the desk at the Hostel (or the Hostile as we now like to call it) we had a ball.

Let me give you a run down.

We left Brighton on Friday morning and drove up through Salisbury to Bath stopping for some lunch at “the Swan Inn” (not sure if that was meant to be witty or not). We passed Arandel Castle on the way which is a gorgeous castle not more than 30 mins from Brighton that is still lived in.

After a 3 hour drive we arrived in beautiful Bath.

We checked into the “Hostile” then went for a brief wander around to show Phil and Katie what there was in offer at in the city.

After which we went to “The Raven of Bath” (Jill’s pub) for a pie and a lot of drinking.

We met a couple of people there. Rhiannon and Dave – not a couple – who were a “HOOT”.

We moved on from the raven to “mandolin’s” this is Bath’s only decent gay pub. That is probably talking it up a bit as it’s not great but the company was fantastic. At about midnight, Katie and Phil went in search of pizza and sleep.

We returned to the Hostile about 20 mins after them to spend an interesting night the dormitory room.

I have never stayed in a hostel before and let me tell you, this wasn’t a good introduction to the world of slumming it.

The next day Aaron had booked a proper hotel for the two of us as a surprise as this was a sort of birthday weekend for him as well.

So we checked out and went to check in at the “red car” hotel.

 We did more sight seeing and walked up “Jacob’s ladder” to get the most gorgeous view of Bath imaginable. It snowed 3 times on Saturday. So much for it being spring. It was really amazing being snowed on when we walked up Jacob’s ladder only Aaron had experienced that before. So much for it being spring, the cold snap has been swift and severe! That night we went out to a restaurant called “Aqua” for dinner. (For those of you that weren’t aware, Bath was originally called Aqua Sulis when it was a roman town, so everything in Bath is aqua this or aqua that…) The restaurant was incredible. Lovely food, great atmosphere and we had a great time.

Of course after this we went out for more drinking, where we ran into Rhiannon and Dave again and ended up back in mandolin’s!

Sunday was a slow day. Katie and Phil went to check out the Roman Baths, while Aaron and I drove out to Laycock, a gorgeous little village that hasn’t changed in hundreds of years and if often used by film makers for period films.

The afternoon was spent with Katie and Phil going to the Bath Spa and spending time in the naturally heated rooftop pool and Aaron and I looking for another hotel as we weren’t going to go back to the Hostile after the nice night in the “red car” hotel.

On Sunday night we were invited to a party for Easter at Jill’s home. We had a ball. Jill’s friends are a very wide cross section of the population. She is so lovely that it seems everyone wants to have her in their lives. As she had worked with the deaf for 25 yrs, there was a large percentage of deaf people at the party and we all learned some sign language – most of which we can’t actually use in polite company but it was fun.

Monday was spent making our way home all of us in a bit of a daze. We stopped in Glastonbury on the way home to see the Abbey and the Tor then we drove home.

It seemed to take all day but I am sure this was mainly caused by exhaustion.

Unfortunately when Aaron and I got back to our flat, we found that someone had attempted to break in.

Luckily the glass in the front door is safety glass and even though they smashed part of it, they were not able to get in.

Thankfully they didn’t try to break the front windows which are not safety glass and would have allowed them very easy access.

Nothing was taken and apart from being a little shaken by this discovery we were both fine – nice end to a weekend away hey! .

I Love this shot of the oriental bandstand on the sea front of Brighton Beach. I took this with my phone camera and as a result am very surprised at how well it turned out. The band stand is derelict now and all access to it has been removed, but with the sky the way it was behind it, I think it looks haunting.

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