Beautiful Bath

Despite thinking London was really cool, I was keen to get out of the city and jumped on a train to Bath. I had met a few people on this trip who suggested Bath was 'lovely' and it was on my way to Totnes so why not stop for a visit? :-)

Bath is a world heritage listed city, and for a good reason. It is famous for being the source of the only natural hot water spring within the UK. This is something of a geological abnormality given there is no volcanic rock present in the area. Hence since (at least) Roman times the waters have been revered for their healing properties.

Bath is also something of a yuppie's paradise. There are resturants, boutique shops, microbreweries etc everywhere. I even came across this traditional English vegetarian pub ;-)

Traditional English (vegetarian) pub fare, lol :-)

In general there seems to be more awareness around sustainability and it seems the norm for restaurants to tout local, organic, fairtrade ingredients and so on. I was very heartened to see this vegetable garden in one of the local parks, provided by the local Transition Towns initiative.

I also enjoyed walking through this *enormous* organic community garden. The photo below probably shows about an 1/8 of the actual size.

Bath's 'huge' organic community garden :-)

People over here are shocked when I tell them that in order to start a community garden in Australia one needs indemnity insurance which requires forming a legal entity, annual auditing and so on. "Just for a community garden?" they say.

Some snaps taken walking around the city...

Bath Abbey

Inside the Abbey

The Roman baths

Along the river

'The Circus'. This is completely round, some kind of architectural genius.
But, there are very pretty trees in the middle :-)

Enormous cats! The size of the cats here is freaking me out.
I can't figure out if they are really that big, or they seem big compared to 'jungle' cats?