Long Weekend in Bath (Playgrounds, Solisbury Hill, Lacock Abbey, and the Roman Baths)

We took advantage of Elise and Charis's half-term break at school to do a long weekend in Bath.  Elizabeth and Richard, the couple we visited, are the rare people in our lives whose friendship has spanned three different life stages.  Elizabeth and Kristine met as university students in Scotland.  Their friendship has maintained through Richard and I entering their lives, and expanded now to include gifts to our respective children.  I was thinking on the drive back to Melbourne about how rare that is, certainly for me.  It is much more common that valued friends are for a time and place.

Bath is supposed to be around 2 hours from Melbourne.  We did it in just under 3 hours.  Considering we left at 4 pm on a Friday night, had to drive through Birmingham rush hour, it was the beginning of a holiday weekend, and it rained for quite a bit of the trip (well, okay - maybe the rain doesn't really count since it rarely doesn't rain), I think we did really well.  I was especially pleased that the girls handled the whole trip without a stop.  We snacked them in the car, but were able to drive straight through.  This opens up a plethora of short trip options for us, since there are an awful lot of places we can get to within a 3 hour drive from Melbourne.

The children hit it off amazingly well.  I think the shared obsession with princess and dress-up had something to do with it.

As did the proximity to a cool playground and a break in the rain for long enough we could walk over to it.

The kids were good sports about the merry-go-round.  They let Richard and I climb on and pushed us.  We did have one mishap involving a certain 3 year old losing her grip and flying off.  That didn't get captured on film.

We spent part of the afternoon on top of Solsbury Hill.  In Iron Age times this hill had a fort on top.  Now the top is flat and bare, which makes it great for flying kites.  The only problem is you have to drive up some pretty narrow roads to get there.

I told Richard that my respect for him grows every time I watch him drive through Bath.  The roads on Solsbury Hill made many other streets in Bath look positively wide and spacious.

Getting from the cars to the top of the hill was a bit of an adventure.  It wasn't raining when we were there, but the ground was very wet and muddy.  The older 3 girls didn't seem to find this a problem.  They were at the top well ahead of the toddlers and parents.

 Courtesy pictures of Bath in the background, which show we were in the area (and not just visiting a local playground).

 The wind on top of the hill was pretty impressive.  We didn't lose any toddlers over the edge.

The kite was a big hit with kids and adults.  Kudos to Richard for having one that was so easy to handle (unlike the ones I remember having as a kid in Kenya that we could never get to work).  His kids had clearly done this before.  Mine had the time of their life.

We spent part of Sunday at Lacock Abbey.  More truthfully, we drove to Lacock Abbey, and had to navigate a couple of distractions before we got onto the grounds.  First, there was the playground.  We didn't lose anyone off the merry-go-round this time.

Although Clare's chin still showed the after-effects of her previous not-so-merry-go-around.

There was a sci-fi based fundraiser going on at the Abbey.  We didn't get pictures of Darth Maul, Darth Vader, or the TARDIS.  I have it on good authority that this little fellow might have been a variant of R2-D2.

The kids were much more interested in K-9 (evidently from Dr. Who).

We did make it into the grounds.  We even tried to get a group photo.  Unfortunately, said photo required us to look into the sun.  Hence the creative squints from the front row.

The abbey itself, while beautiful, didn't seem to particularly interest the kids.  They did get a kick out of walking along the wall.  This wall is on one side of a moat that separated the abbey from the lawn.  Evidently this let sheep graze on the lawn without coming too close to the abbey itself.

We'd been on the Abbey grounds for a good hour or so by the time we actually got inside.  Our girls were starting to get a tad cranky.  Fortunately for us, the inside had enough interesting things that they perked up for the rest of the afternoon.  The stone windows were a big hit.

As were the columns that formed the ceiling in the hallways and rooms.

Portions of several Harry Potter films have been shot here.  One of the rooms had a couple of tribute posters and a cauldron.  We took advantage of the cauldron to do some "Collins Girls and the Goblet of Fire" poses.

Once we got outside again, we found an artistic piece built by weaving trees (I think they were willows) together to form a multi-domed canopy.  Willow domes + coats doubling as sleeping bags = 5 minutes of make-believe camping.

In addition to princesses, playgrounds, and make-believe, it turned out the girls had a shared love of Enid Blyton.  Noddy's first adventures in Toyland was the bedtime reading most evenings we were in Bath.

Monday morning after Richard went to work, Kristine and Elizabeth took the older 3 girls to the Roman Baths while I watched the two toddlers.  It was clear when they got back to the house that the girls had greatly enjoyed themselves (Kristine said they would have stayed all day if they weren't getting hungry).  I wasn't there, so here are the photos without comment.