Still in search of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Still not king. (Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.) However, I now know something I didn’t before – that a roast is traditional Sunday lunch and difficult to get any other day. Of course, we’re leaving on Sunday. Sigh, maybe at the airport (shudder-twitch).
Anyway, we began the day at Farleigh Hungerford Castle, the very picturesque ruins of a castle built in the 1400s by Thomas Hungerford – not even nobility, but a merchant! – though his family was raised up later. It was fortified without the permission of the king, for which Thomas had to pay the very stiff fine of one mark. That’ll teach ’em! The family had a colorful history. One member married a servant who’d killed her husband to make way for her new marriage. Her noble immunity lasted until the lord’s death, at which point she lost her head. Another imprisoned his third wife – one wonders what happened to the first two – in the Lady Tower. When she refused to eat for fear of poisoning, the townsfolk raised food up to her. The family lost the castle when one of the offshoots had to sell it for £56,000 to pay his debts. It seems that shortly thereafter, the villagers began raiding it for stone for their own houses. Farleigh Hungerford Castle had a nice hunt set up for the kids where they had to find the hidden knights and squires and could design their own coats of arms. Whoever hid the knights and squires (Em, we were told) was a devious bugger – up trees, in a fireplace, under a storm drain! When the heavens opened up, we ran for the car, me forgetting even to return our audio tour! (The very nice proprietor of Hatt Farm, where we stayed that night, graciously offered to take care of returning it for us.)
Off to Bath. Aside from the fact that you can grow old getting in or out of the city, it is remarkable. Coming in from the south, the views were breathtaking, gorgeous houses arrayed on the hillside looking down on you. And the Roman Baths! Words just can’t express. Having studied the Roman Empire in Latin class and, of course, reading all those Regencies, I was most looking forward to seeing the baths, and they didn’t disappoint. It was amazing to see the reconstructed mosaics, stone carvings, and, especially, the Roman engineering still in place. Their drains and piping (copper and lead) were still working and their hypocaust system of heating the floors and walls was absolutely brilliant. There were street performances everywhere – classical, Native American in full costume but with a Celtic feel to the music!, a chalk artist amazingly recreating a Renaissance painting on a cobbled street. We took it all in, had some dinner, walked – okay, I walked, Ty ran, Pete watched from above – in the gorgeous park alongside the river. The flowers were stunning and the sense of peace…I could happily have stayed there forever. 
We never did get our Sally Lunn bun, though we heard from a couple coming out that they were amazing, because they didn’t have a kids’ menu and weren’t polite when I said that we could give Ty a protein bar (since he wouldn’t eat anything on the menu) and stay ourselves, so they lost out on our business entirely. I’m trying and failing to see the sense in that. Trying. Nope, still nothing. It wasn’t even as if at that time – before the dinner rush – they couldn’t spare the table.
The Bizarre Bath tour was fantastic. We were promised no history, just humor. Well…we did get a smidgeon of history, but really it was just a ton of fun. Highly, highly recommended. Kids will miss out on some of the jokes, but they’ll enjoy it as well. In fact, some of the locals threw open their windows so that they could hear the tour when it came by and a couple (one on a bicycle and one homeless man yelling “I am Sin!”) got into the act.
No comments:
Post a Comment