It's Bath time! Roman ruins, ginormous bunns and a Jane Austen tour: How to spend a day in the historical city
7.15am We arrive at Paddington early to get the 7.29am Great Western train to Bath Spa. On board, we eat miniature pots of porridge and zip past Reading, Swindon and Wiltshire until, at 8.43am, we hit Bath. The weather is, this morning at least, grey and windy. Still, Bath is the country's only city to be designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in its entirety and, even in the drizzle, it's obvious why. There are 5,000 listed buildings in this 112,000- person city. We leave the station and begin ogling the cobbled streets and limestone houses.
9am Time to head to the Roman Baths for a guided tour of one of Europe's largest and best-preserved Roman ruins. The baths were built around 70AD on top of a geothermal spring that, thanks to some canny ancient plumbing, gave citizens a constant supply of 46C bathing water. Men and women would come here to wash, socialise and seek revenge on their enemies – as shown by the 'curse tablets' on display at the Baths' museum. Apparently, disgruntled Romans would inscribe curses on to metal sheets, then toss them into the bathing pools where they believed the goddess Minerva lived. Yikes.
10.15am We head to Sally Lunn's – a 'bunn' restaurant inside one of Bath's oldest buildings (the site dates back to approximately 1480). If you're a bunn ignoramus, some context: in 1680 a young Huguenot called Solange Luyon fled France and came to Bath. She rebranded herself as Sally Lunn, got a job in a bakery and began selling her own special 'bunns' to locals. A Sally Lunn's bunn is a bit like a brioche roll, only bigger and more savoury. We order a stack of breakfast bunns, sliced in half, toasted and topped with bacon, smoked salmon and avocado. Somewhat underestimating their size, we also get a few sweet bunns to share. The group consensus is that the £6.50 cinnamon-butter one is the best.
11.20am Buoyed by our bunns and the improving weather, we meet the Jane Austen tour guide Theresa Roche (below, in lilac costume) for an Austen-themed march around Bath. Theresa, who is part of the Strictly Jane Austen Tours company, wears a traditional Regency dress and takes us to various Austen-related places: the market Jane might have shopped in, the flat on Gay Street where she moved after her father died. When asked – and after careful consideration – Theresa says that her favourite Austen man is either Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey or Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. Excellent choices.
1.20pm The sun is properly out now, so we buy supplies from The Beckford Bottle Shop and sit in the Royal Crescent as YOU's drinks columnist Charlotte conducts an impromptu wine tasting. (Highlights include a rosé fizz from Sussex and a Chablis-like Assyrtiko from Crete.) Built between 1767 and 1775, the Royal Crescent was designed by John Wood the younger, and contains 30 identical Georgian terraced houses. Or, rather, almost identical. In 1972, one resident – Miss Wellesley-Colley – painted her front door primrose yellow, rather than the street-established white. She was consequently given two enforcement orders from Bath City Council and forced to undergo a public inquiry. Impressively, Wellesley-Colley won; the door remains yellow today.
3pm We drive 15 minutes to Homewood, an 18th-century country house that became a hotel in 2018. Alongside 31 bedrooms, it has an excellent spa. So, in appropriately Roman fashion, we spend the afternoon bathing. The kit here is bougier than the spas of 70AD; there's an indoor hydrotherapy pool, sauna, outdoor pool and a bucket you stand under that douses you with freezing water. An hour or so later it's time for Homewood's afternoon tea, then back to the station for the 18.13 train home. On board, we google Royal Crescent property prices (around £4.5m for a house, sadly) and dream of cinnamon bunns. Bliss.
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