Roman Baths

And then he then he took me for a tour of Bath and sort of told me the history of the city.

We went to the baths, the Roman baths, after which the city is named.

And and then we went up to the tour, which which is basically the inspiration for Salisbury Hill.

And I just got the feel for the place, for the...

Sulus, who was a native of these islands, and Minerva from the Roman Empire.

We're at the Roman Baths at Bath, down in England's deep southwest.

This week's a bit of a, it's a bit of a departure for me, this one.

And I say it's a bit of a departure for me because when I was a, a student at university studying archaeology, and even before that, I always found the Romans a bit strange and difficult.

And so they made sure that there were places where there was hot water, cold water, plunge pools and all the rest of it.

And they, in that Roman way, they sort of formalised and imposed order on what had been just a natural feature in the landscape.

I mean, the buildings that are there now, the Roman baths were lost.

And after the Romans departed in the 5th century, the town that they had built at Bath fell into disrepair.

It's a small town just east of Bath.

Now most people know Bath 'cause of the Roman Baths, Jane Austen, blah, blah, blah.

It's a pretty decent sized city.

Not...

And there were just a lot of people.

And that's why I say, if you do just a day trip, go in the morning.

I did not go into the Roman Baths.

I didn't go into the Bath Abbey.

And Austen walked along that street.

It was round the corner from where she lived on Gay Street in, in one set of lodgings, and she walked along that street, and that's the, those are the very buildings, the facades that she saw, you know, as well as, and then walking down and you get down as far as the Roman Baths and Bath Abbey.

And we know that she went to the Pump Rooms.

We know that she, you know, went to the old Theatre Royal and, and so these places are all still there.

actually grew up in the south of England in a very rural area.

So I grew up right near Stonehenge and Bath, the famous city there in the Roman Baths.

And...

Yeah, I grew up very kind of like rural in the middle of nowhere, but had a mother that was very interested in antiques and would buy things at estate sales and that kind of stuff and learned to reupholster a chair herself.