Bathed in Georgian gentility
PEOPLE still come to Bath to bathe. There’s a queue outside the Thermae Bath Spa, where you can enjoy the steaming waters and city skyline.
Our hotel, The Gainsborough, is the only hotel in the city to pipe the thermal waters into its spa. Do the rounds — sauna, steam room, ice alcove — between shots of hot chocolate.
It was once a doctor’s house, then a hospital in the 1820s with a chapel, before lying derelict and finally being rescued by YTL Hotels. They’ve spent £35 million and it’s swish with elegant lighting, sumptuous textiles and a Regency feel.
It’s the ideal spot from which to explore the Roman Baths. Here, you’ll realise human nature hasn’t changed in 1,500 years. Curses written on lead or pewter were thrown into the Sacred Spring for the Goddess to answer.
One reads: ‘May the person who has stolen Vilbia from me become as liquid as water.’ The Abbey nearby is worth visiting for its East Window alone, which shows 56 scenes from the life of Christ. Destroyed in the Blitz, it was painstakingly restored.
At The Holburne Museum, you get a feel for the genteel life of Georgian Bath. Tea was newly fashionable and they did things properly with spoons made from Indian Ocean seashells and silver cow creamers. The Pieter
Bruegel attributedHolburne’sJosiah exhibition, Wedgwood,own paintings collection,with whotwo fromis on recentlyhad now. Thea showroom in Bath, described the shops as ‘richer and more extravagant in their shew than London’.
That still holds, but instead my boyfriend marches me to the Bath Skyline, a six-mile walk up above the city. On a spring day, it’s wonderful. Back in town, we tuck into pepperoni pizza, safe in the knowledge that those curing spa waters will put everything right in the morning.