Bath

Sorry for lack of update yesterday - the hotel was having a problem with its Internet access. If you haven't heard by now, England lost to Portugal and the country is taking it pretty hard.

We spent yesterday in Bath, which is a beautiful city, named for the Roman baths built as a restorative center in 44 AD. The water contains 30 different minerals, is three times harder than regular water, and is slightly radioactive(!).


After a short drive around Bath Crescent, Bath Circus, and the Pulteney Bridge, we took a self-guided audio tour of the Roman baths, which were excavated in the 1700s and 1800s. Some of us even paid 50 pence (about $1) to drink a glass of the warm, sulfuric water. Tasty! (Not really.)

We had some free time to wander around, then we met up with members of the Redland Wind Band for a picnic lunch at the Bath Parade Grounds (the site of our first concert). It was cool to meet the band, and they brought us a delicious potluck picnic lunch. A few of them sat in with us on our concert.


Our concert, by the way, was great. (It was also the premiere of our new band polo shirts, which look sharp.)


We were crowded into a bandstand, and had quite a decent audience in the Parade Grounds. The English are apparently enjoying their streak of hot weather (we are not - it's just like the weather at home, minus the air conditioning, ceiling fans, and ice.) It did start raining at intermission, but it stopped by the end of concert - our diehard fans retreated under the trees to wait out the rain.


After the concert, we went on a tour of Bath Abbey. One of the people buried there is Mr. Pitman (sorry, didn't get his first name) who invented shorthand. Then we had dinner at a hotel restaurant in Bath, and headed back to Swindon for a good night's rest.