Bathing in Bath
Roman Baths from above My mom and dad arrived yesterday for a two-week visit to England and Scotland. We spent the day yesterday wandering around Oxford, but I won’t bore you with the details most of which will by now be familiar to my regular readers. Today, however, we did something I had never done: take a trip to the bath. The Roman Bath. In Bath.
Bath (or, as the British seem to pronounce it, “Baaaarath”) is located in the south west of England about 1.5 hours from Oxford. It’s a very old city. The foundations of the Roman Baths which you see in the first picture date from just after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, although it’s believed the Celts used the hot springs feeding the pool before the Romans arrived. Although the pools are full, you can’t actually go in the water these days as the water isn’t treated; you can see the pool is green algae, but in Roman times it was clear because a roof prevented the sunlight from feeding the algae blooms.
Underfloor heating The Roman Baths were a complete spa complex, healing both the body and the spirit, as a central part of the spa was a temple to the goddess Sulis Minerva, a hybrid Celtic-Roman goddess. In addition to the main mineral pool, the spa had hot tubs, cold pools, and saunas. This picture shows the foundations of a floor of a sauna; the floor was elevated on the columns you see here and hot air flowed between the columns to heat the floor and the room above: be sure to wear sandals!
Mom and Dad near the Royal Crescent, Bath From here, we’re off to Oban, a small town on the coast in the highlands of Scotland, and then to Edinburgh, York, and then London, with a bunch of day trips from London. In the meantime, there are a few more pictures from our trip today (the last 6 in that gallery) to tide you over until you hear from me again next weekend.
Comment by Patrick
Doug, I’m glad you made it out to Bath. I didn’t quite get the chance. I hope you also enjoyed endiburg, and york two places I thoroughly enjoyed!
Also where was the picture ‘circles and lines’ taken.. that looks awesome!
Cheers,
P
