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Soaked in Bath

Upon feeling perky overnight at 3:30 am, I set my alarm for 7am this morning thinking I would get up and go on a short run. Alas, when the alarm sounded, I was deep in slow-wave sleep and woke up only long enough to dismiss the alarm and flip my pillow.   I managed to get going by the B&B’s breakfast time (8:30am); breakfast was quite good with uncharacteristically (for Britain) strong coffee. More on this B&B below. For not having really planned this day, it turned out pretty great. I decided to start by following a Jane Austen walking tour , created by the city of Bath and available online.   It was easy to follow, informative, and rivaled any Rick Steves or other audio-walking-tour I’ve tried. Although it highlighted various Austen locations, it wasn’t overly-Jane and was of general interest to anyone, I’d think.     After the first stop, I found myself outside the entrance to Bath’s Roman Baths . It was still early in the day with no-one in line and, ev...
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Bath and Beyond

               I’m safely ensconced in my Bath, UK Bed & Breakfast after a long but incident-free travel day. The only minor glitch was that the train from London to Bath took nearly twice as long as scheduled due to a route “diversion following a gas leak near Didcot, which is causing severe disruption to train services.”   I was exhausted at this point, but any aggravation was offset by recognizing my massive luck at being on this train at all.   I had scheduled a later train but managed to board this one, only to discover that the one I’d originally scheduled, and several others, ended up being canceled. Whew! After settling in and showering, I took a short reconnaissance walk and saw what looks to be Bath’s version of the Ponte Vecchio.   Pulteney Bridge Now, after several hours of sleep, I’m awake at midnight Bath time, hearing all sorts of raucous Jane Austen fan tourists milling around outside. I’ll begin my ow...
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Back to the U.K.

            No, I’m not talking about Harry and Meghan, bless their hearts.   Rather, I scheduled a U.K. two-fer this year – Scotland/Northumberland in July.   And next, London with a side-trip to Bath. Regular readers know that the Scotland trip was all about cycling with The Hubs, but this upcoming trip is a solo-ish, extended, non-cycling adventure.   Which is to say that I signed up for another long-ish stay with The Good Life Abroad (TGLA) . Last year’s TGLA trip was a month in Florence, which I lengthened on the front end with a few days each in Lucca and Porto Venere. The glow from that trip continues to shimmer.   It really was the experience of a lifetime that I’ll treasure always. I have visions of another extended stay in that area on my own sometime, but in the meantime, I impulsively booked with TGLA for a shorter stay (2 weeks) in London. I’ve added a few days on the front end in Bath, where I’ll recover from jet lag...
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Travel Time vs. Time Travel

       Upon returning from long vacations, I typically feel like no time at all has passed here at home. It’s a weird feeling, as if I’ve disappeared Outlander style, yet returned to pick up just minutes from when I left off.   It’s not as if I’ve crossed over into some parallel reality for the vacation’s duration – a parallel reality / timeline would proceed apace with my regular one.   Rather, it feels as if I’ve jumped to some perpendicular reality/timeline in which my experiences barely overlap with my usual routine.  I’ve also found that the longer I’m gone, the more intense this sensation. Years ago, I returned from six weeks away. Everything in my house felt and looked the same except that I had to blink away some strange aura shimmering around all my stuff, as if it had been held in suspension. On my first day back this time, I looked for evidence that my regular life had leapt forward three weeks. I noticed that the saplings newly plant...
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Weather

          Before traveling to the UK, we obsessed over the weather forecasts, figuring that there is no way we wouldn’t experience plenty of rain and/or wind. We came equipped with wet riding gear and the forecasts made it seem like our rain gear would be put to frequent use. But by some miracle, we experienced zero rain from the time we arrived, all through our Backroads tour, and through our Eurobike tour . . . until today.   From our hotel this morning, we checked the rain forecast a zillion times (it’s different each time) and were pretty confident that we had a rain-free window from around 11am to 6pm to ride from Kelso to Innerleithen .   We set out around 10:45 and within 20 minutes, we were in light mist that morphed into real rain that came and went for most of our 30 mile ride.   We stopped at this church and stood under a protective tree for a while but soon realized we just needed to suck it up and go.       ...
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