Scribe and Photo by Website Kang
At the last day of stay in London, Sing Sung managed to book by phone a 4 bed dormitory in YMCA for two days at Bath.
We packed our bags again and went leisurely to Victoria Bus Station and bought tickets to board a bus to Bath. This way
was better as it avoided the hassle of time pressure if you pre purchased the bus tickets earlier.
The journey started at about 11.00am and after some distance, the bus started to have trouble of having losing speed especially
in climbing hills. I was sitting behind the bus driver who kept contacting the office for alternative solution in case the
bus broke down. We were worried, but fortunately the bus managed to scrape through and we reached Bath
safely at about 4.00 pm. The bus did stop at smaller towns like Swindon and Chippenham to either unload or reload passengers.
The scenery all the way to Bath was picturesque. Miles and miles of cattle, sheep farmland, cottages, typical English villages,
characters homes were beautiful. The houses which passed down from generation to generation were old,but had been preserved and maintained very well. The bus journey was very pleasant.
After the check in in YMCA, we found that we had time to visit the two important places of Bath. i.e. the Roman and the King's
baths and the Museum of Costume.
The museum closed earlier, and we were suggested to vist the museum first followed by the baths. only Sing Sung and I visited
the places as the others were not keen at all.
The Museum of Costume:-
This is a museum of fashionable clothes and was opened in 1963 and has 30,000 objects in its collection. The displays illustrate the changing styles of dress for men, women and children
over the last 400 years.
A permanent display of fashion from the late 16th century to the present day. Three display galleries cover the periods:
Sing Sung and me just went round and snapped a few photos. It probably would interest a fashion designer or student, and in such
case one could have spent days in it.
After that we went to the Roman baths.
It is a well preserved historical site and the hot spring is still oozing from the original source.
Beginning sometime around 65 AD, and continuing for nearly four centuries, the Romans after the invasion of Roman Empire
to England, constructed increasingly elaborate
bathing and temple complexes at the springs.
The main spring, bubbling out of the ground at a rate of a quarter of a million gallons per day and maintaining a constant
temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Centigrade) was however, far more than just a source of hot water to the
Romans.
By the sixth Century the temple and baths had fallen into disuse and the reservoir vault had collapsed
into the spring. The waters Continued to rise within the ruined building and the Saxon monastery may have used them for
bathing. In the I2th century the King’s Bath, named after Henry I, Was built within the remains of the Roman building unknowingly.
It was used as a curative bath and was fed from directly below by the hot Spring. The King’s Bath lay Within the Precincts
of the medieval monastery.
Later excavation works show that the King's Bath was built on the foundation of the Roman's Bath as at that time people had no knowledge
of the Roman's bath after the Roman Empire's retreat and the bath had collapsed and been buried.
Anyway, historically, Bath has been a resort city and the tourists are flocking from all over the places. Even wild birds were feeding
on tourists' bread ( money ).
After the dinner, Garfield, Sing Sung and me decided to have some beer in an English pub which was near to YMCA, the place
where we had put up. It was a pub full of young people. We met a group of young students from Bath University and had a nice
chat with them. They told us the difference between British, English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. One of them, Andy, a Scottish
said he would be annoyed if people called him as an English but it would be ok if he is called British. To us, they look the same.
The music was loud but the pub was crowded. I think Pub's business is still the best business in UK. It was time to leave when
I kept on dozing off.
We were scheduled to go to Stonehenge the next day. After a nice breakfast in YMCA, we took a bus at 9.30 am leisurely to Salisbury where we
got transfer to another bus to the Stonehenge. Scenery on the way was perfect as usual. We reached Stonehenge at noon.
Stonehenge is the most outstanding prehistoric monument in the British Isles and is a World Heritage Site.
It was said that 5000 years ago, ancient people mapped the course of the sun and moon to build this monument to bury their
leaders. The larger stones from the picture are Sarsen stones, brought from the Marlborough Downs 19 miles away and the smaller
stones, known as the Bluestones, are from the mystical Preseli Mountains in Wales, 240 miles away.
Whatever it was, people came all the way just to see this monument out from this vast empty land. It was cute to know that a
group of Japanese charted a taxi to come all the way from London just to see this and this Japanese group had only two days in
London. Amazing, isn't it ?
We waited for our bus which arrived at 2.00pm and we were back at Bath at 4.00 pm.
After bath, and rest until 8.30pm, Sing Sung and I had our favourite English meal Fish and Chips as dinner. Garfield and
Drug Buster had KFC instead.
That ended our days in Bath. We could only book first night hostel accommodation in Cardiff and there were many uncertanties ahead. But, we had no
choice but to proceed adopting a kind of attitude, " Go, wait and see!".
Date: 24-08-2004
Dress before 1800;
Dress 1800 - 1899;
and Dress since 1900.
There are also display cases devoted to fashion accessories and
underwear.