5:30 AM the alarm buzzes and for the first time in my history of weekends, I woke up at that unearthly hour. I woke up Soms too, as it was decided previous night that she would prepare dosas for us for breakfast. By the time we all got ready, it was already close to 7. And, Anita & Shashi had just begun to prepare masala for the dosa. In the meanwhile, I called up a cab and told him to take us to Parkway station at 7:10. Potatoes weren't put for the masala, but still we managed to grab some dosas with half done palya. All in all, we were in a hurry, and the cab driver had already come & waited for 10 mins. we 3 jumped into the cab to go to train station. Luckily, he confirmed we were to go to Parkway station, and suddenly Jay's bell rang and told him to take us to Temple Meads station !
7:38 we arrived at the station and hurriedly bought the tickets and ran like never before to catch the train. Ooph ! we made it ! We were in the train at 7:40 and the train started moving ! Guess for us, stations and running go hand in hand !
It was a 11 minute ride to Bath Spa, and by the time we came to normal, we were off the train. We went enquiring on the place the tour was supposed to start and reached there well before time for the first time :). Our half day tour began sharply at 9 and our tour guide was humourous and fun filled. On way to Stonehenge, he showed the estates of Lord Bath and mentioned that he had a wife and 80+ 'wifelets' and was looking forward to make it a century.
We reached Stonehenge, where lied few pieces of heavy stones mysteriously in an unorderly fashion, supposed to be built in 3000 B.C. ! The radio operated guided tour was mentioning about the several myths and facts associated with this place. It also said that there were more than 700 varieties of small plants which grew on the stones. And being in this place, we got some kind of feeling that we came back in time machine to the age when this was built. And a lot of questions ringing in the mind - who built this, why was this built, what was this used for, how did they get the stones, etc etc ! I'm still searching for the answers. The snap of it, - you all might have seen it in the windows desktop display properties, but here's it again for you..
From there, we proceeded to Lacock National Trust Village. This wonderful village consists of properties which date from 13th and 18th centuries. It was once a prosperous woollen town, but now it seems like a village trapped in time. As we entered the village, we felt as if we were stepping back into history. There was a beautiful flower show organized as well. The Abbey and the house below were also used in the filming of the first two Harry Potter movies.
It also became the town of Meriton in the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. Have a look at the street, if you have seen this movie, recollect.
This village also has the oldest pub in England, established in 1391.
From here, we went back to Bath and reached the place by 1 PM. To our surprise, there was an Indian cuisine (Jamuna restaurant) right in front of the stop and we had our lunch there. We then went to Roman Baths.
The Roman Baths is supposed to be the most preserved building of Roman empire in UK. They claim to have the best architecture, but when compared to Indian architecure, its nothing. There were 2 baths - main bath and the sacred spring. Of interest was the sacred spring, where hot air bubbles were coming out of water and this was considered to be a holy bath during medeival period.
The radio guide tour mentioned that only preists were allowed into the sacred spring and common man had to go to the other one. And one interesting thing was that, if a person lost anything, he would write it down on a stone or metal and throw it in the bath asking the water God (Aqueus Sulias) to punish the culprit. We also saw those metal pieces and wondered how people lived during that time ! As the tour proceeded, we also got to know that the so called preists were predicting futures also by killing a goat and examining the lever of it. What a crap we thought, as In India also people still sacrifice a goat or any animal. (Whereever it is, its the goat - bakra). How does it differ in any way to the Indian civilization ? And so many crappy mythologies that we couldn't take more of it ! Thats where instantaniously, 3 terms came by us:
Roman civilization - kantri civilization, by Jay
Priest - kuri cutter, by me
We are Romans, coz we are Roaming, by Soms !
After highly dissatisfied with the Roman civilization, we came out of the bath & went to a place where they served water coming from the sacred spring. The taste was yuck, but the lady who served was too pretty ;)
We then went around the small town, saw the Abbey and gardens and left for Bristol at 6 PM. We reached Bristol pretty fast, and as we hadn't covered any part of Bristol, asked Soms to take us to some place which made us feel like we were in Bristol. Hurriedly, she took us to the centre of city where a fountain was the main attraction (unfortunately, it was turned off). Then again, we had a gala time running back to the coach station to catch the 7:20 PM bus back to London. We still made it and were there just 5 mins prior to departure ! We bid our final adieus and boarded the bus.
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