Bath Travelogue

I went away to Bath last weekend with my very dear friend, Mrs Stacey. We met at University some 16 years ago (which now makes me feel hideously old!). We try and have one or two weekends away together a year so that we can meet on neutral territory and explore somewhere different and exciting or revisit a favourite haunt. Sometimes dancing (or ‘cutting some rug’) is a feature, but always laughing, shouting, eating, drinking, shopping, talking and pushing each other further and further into the realms of insanity will feature.

So, the first thing that happens is Mrs S picks me up from work and after stowing my suitcase on the backseat we prepare to leave. I make out that I am going to sneeze and get a paper napkin out of my pocket ‘Atchoo!’ I cry and fling the contents of the napkin at her…so she’s sat in the driver seat festooned in salt sachets and hysterical with laughter.

To explain: we have had an ‘in joke’ about salt for some years now. I was staying at Mrs S’ flat in Exeter and asked for some salt for my boiled egg. ‘You know’ she said ‘I never really thought about how much salt I ate until the government told me I wasn’t supposed to and now I just want to eat more of it!’. This culminated with us hanging out of the window shouting ‘We’re eating salt in here Tony Blair! And you can’t stop us!’. Since then the joke has been continued with the purchase of various salty souvenirs from around the world, acquiring salt pots on nights out and always including a sachet of salt in each other’s birthday cards.

The rest of the journey passed without incident…well other than some traffic.

We found the B&B and decamped to our room. It was clean and comfortable if a little on the small side with slightly chintzy furnishings. There was a nice garden with a sweet spotty bunny rabbit and a pond which contained an enormous Koi carp resembling a giant sweet potato.

Employing Mrs S’s plunger mug we brewed a decent coffee and caught up, setting the world to rights and hatching a plan about what we were going to do that evening. Mrs S writes this: http://afemaleview.wordpress.com/

So the mission was to visit some of the local real ale venues and try some ales. Since spending time with Mrs S I am not averse to sacrificing my beloved lager or red wine and be corrupted with a bit of real ale. I favour the lighter, fruitier ones but am happy to try most of them out.

First stop was here: http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/39/3959/Old_Green_Tree/Bath it’s a small venue but the landlord and clientele were welcoming. The bartender resembled Dave Grohl…only with a slightly wet look perm! We enjoyed a few ales in there but then went in search of dinner. Dinner was taken here: http://www.enzo-ristorante.co.uk/ and was very good indeed. Only problem being I’ve restricted carbs so much lately and foolishly devoured two pieces of bread plus a portion of pasta. I then became Mr Creosote but I did force down another pint in here: http://www.coeur-de-lion.co.uk/ this was Bath’s smallest pub, allegedly, but we did at least find a seat and some locals to talk about beer with!

Saturday morning. The B&B had some ridiculous 8-9 breakfast policy so we trudged over to the breakfast room just after 8.30. After we were seated we grabbed the menu. Mrs S lets out an audible gasp ‘They only serve instant coffee! I can’t believe that’. I certainly hadn’t spotted THAT on the website. I made do with some decaff instant (it resembled coffee only in that it was the same colour) and Mrs S took some tea. We opted for scrambled egg but Mrs S decided to have it with salmon. Whilst we waited I grabbed a yoghurt from the buffet section and then we both became hysterical as I tried a spoonful and started pulling faces at its’ vile taste. It must’ve had about a tonne of sugar in it and not only that it was Happy Shopper brand? Happy Shopper??! Didn’t even know that existed anymore!

Eventually the scrambled eggs arrived. ‘The salmon?’ asked the young boy serving and proffered a plate to Mrs S containing a whopping great salmon fillet! Not the smoked salmon she was expecting. We did not meet his eye but when he walked away suppressed more giggles and Mrs S mouthed at me ‘What the f***?’. ‘It’s that Koi carp from the pond’ I said mischievously and tucked into my unremarkable repast.

It was all very odd.

My Sister lives in Bath so I thought it only right to meet her and my little niece and nephew for a coffee. My niece was almost tripping over herself running down the street to show me that her toenails were varnished bright pink. She was very excited about it. It was nice to catch up with them, despite my nephew depositing crayons in my coffee not once but twice.

Of course the only sensible thing to do after having two coffees was to go and have another one with Mrs S. Which meant the next few hours were spent in a slightly altered state, tripping round Bath, laughing and shouting and trying not to murder the man on the street peddling bird whistles.

We went here for lunch: http://www.caferetro.co.uk/ and very good it was too! Mrs S had been about a million years ago and was pleased to see it was still in business and as good as she remembers. Would definitely go back! We whiled away the afternoon accessory shopping. I got a splendid unicorn pendant and Mrs S a red scarf. Then shopping all got a bit too much so we decamped to the Old Green Tree again for another pint!

Then the incident occurred.

We got back to the B&B only to find a bunch of keys left in the door to our room. Naturally we were quite concerned as someone could have let themselves in and helped themselves to our stuff. The more we thought about the wider implications we were furious. Mrs S (always good to know a Mrs S in a crisis…) went off to speak to the proprietors. Unfortunately only their daughter was available for comment. She did telephone her Father who later knocked on our door to apologise. Well, I think that was his intention; instead he just stood there laughing and joking and shuffling awkwardly and not really taking the situation that seriously. When we questioned if he would take this further with the guilty party he admitted it was his wife! and that yes, he would have her flogged, publically if necessary. And that was the end of that…Harumph.

We tried not to let his nonchalant attitude spoil our fun and promptly wolfed down some M&S snacks including their wonderful vine leaves. Then it was time to hit the town! First stop was here: http://www.theroyaloak-bath.co.uk/index.php?page=welcome and although they were pleasant enough and their ales were attractively priced, we weren’t really feeling the vibe so after sampling some of their ales, including one which had the aroma of a damp tea towel, We headed by taxi here: http://www.star-inn-bath.co.uk/

Now, this is where the evening sort of unravelled a bit. If you include the early evening pint when we were still out shopping then by the time we arrived here a fair few ales had already been sampled. As soon as we entered the establishment I knew it was going to be our kind of place, not least because of the tempting cheeseboard laid out on the bar to help yourselves too. There was an eye-wateringly strong cheddar, some Port Salut and it seemed we’d missed the boat on the Stilton. There was also cream crackers and some rather nice chutney (NOT pickle!). The pub was quite busy so we hovered by the bar, partaking in the cheese and drinking Bellringer. I can’t remember how we got chatting to the guy who was propping up the bar but very soon the conversation had turned to The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Dr Who, Hue & Cry and endless Kenneth Williams impressions. We also asked of him the Wicker Man question, which is what top 5 people you wish to send to the Wicker Man (please tell me yours in the comments). This prompted much venom and vitriol about Coldplay and also Jeremy Vine. It seems we had infiltrated the local branch of the Jeremy Vine Haters Club! But it broke the ice.

Add to that more real ales, more cheese and free snuff and an endless stream of bawdy men, comedy characters and a dog called Rupert and that was pretty much the flavour of the evening. Welsh Paul was a particularly endearing character who appeared in the pub not long after we did. If we had not been told ‘Welsh Paul is here’ then let me tell you, it would not have been too difficult to guess which nation he was so passionately representing! Dressed in red and green with Welsh dragons and flags attached to his person; he punctuated every sentence with ‘Boyo’ and kept breaking into a superb baritone rendition of ‘Bread of Heaven’. I expect if we had checked leeks, Welsh cakes and pictures of Tom Jones could have been found on his person. I kid you not.

Unfortunately the pub stayed open until just gone 1am…

Apparently I left in a taxi…?

Sunday morning. Ghastly hangover and time to face the surreal breakfast experience again. We both concurred we couldn’t be bothered with it but seeing as we had paid for it we thought we’d better. Once more into the breech… Breakfast room was rammed with the world and his wife so we were ushered to the sitting room to wait. Soon we were seated in the corner, adjacent to the Diana memorial pin up and a stag party. No fish today but we did notice that haddock and salmon fillets were reserved FOR ADULTS ONLY! Which of course made us hysterical again. Tardy breakfast service but I was at least equipped with some Quorn Sausages. They just helped slice through the vicious hangover.

When it came to check out time we simply couldn’t be arsed with properly handing the keys in. I was having one of those hangovers where I just couldn’t deal with talking to people and Mrs S thought it made quite a good statement to them after them leaving the keys in the door earlier! So we just left.

The rain started just as we arrived in bath so we fumbled for our umbrellas. Mine was tiger print and Mrs S’s was a fine leopard print specimen. As we were traversing the tourist central area I made a big show of pretending to be leading a guided tour, umbrella aloft. Outside the Baths there appeared to be some sort of animal print umbrella convention; so we fitted right in! Coffee was deemed necessary and we revisited Costa for a huge vat of fully loaded Americano. We became hysterical in there (yes, we do do that a lot) so had to leave and pull ourselves together.

Lunchtime came and we started perusing menus of the many pubs and tearooms in the centre. After some consideration we decided we did not want anything sandwichey but were definitely both in the market for a jacket potato (nothing like refined carbs when you’re hungover) and Mrs S possibly fancied some quiche (pronounced ‘kwitchie’). So the hunt began. We settled on a quaint little tearoom not far from the Abbey. All mock Cath Kidston table cloths, mismatched vintage china and youths in old fashioned dress. Jackets were on the menu as was quiche. Result! So in we went. Repressing the urge to get all ‘Withnail & I’ on them we were lead meekly upstairs. We both selected a jacket with vegetarian chilli and Mrs S disappeared off to the lavatory. An apologetic waitress appeared saying they’d just sold the last chilli so we’d have to re-order. Quandary: I just didn’t fancy anything else. They couldn’t even offer a bean & cheese substitute. Then Mrs S appeared looking alarmed ‘Their toilets are FILTHY’ she exclaimed ‘Filthy!’. Once I’d updated her on the lack of chilli situation we decided to scarper before we had to explain ourselves. What followed was a 30+ minute tour of the backstreets of Bath in search of jacket potatoes. Wall to wall sandwiches but no spuds! Typically we ended up about a stones throw away from the earlier place (filthy toilet) and had a lovely lunch without incident. Other than another tourist complaining about her scone and the idiots who had chosen to sit outside being caught in a downpour. Ha ha!

Other amusing things that were said over the course of the weekend, mostly by me, which even when you knew the context probably wouldn’t have made much more sense:

Me, flung forward in the passenger seat, choking on sandwich “Sorry it was the lorry!”

“F*** off you flatulent old whore!”

“Flatulent five am fruit feaster”

“I went to Thessaloniki and all I bought was this umbrella” and later as it disintegrated “It’s no wonder the Greek economy is shot to s*** if they can’t even make a decent brolly!”

“This place is just one big grockle magnet!”

“Why am I still holding your f***ing eggcups?”

And also an incident where I was asked to hold Mrs S’ umbrella ‘For a minute’ so I started a ridiculous ‘Countdown’ style theme tune culminating with me pretending to throw the umbrella on the floor once the minute was up.

Alas the weekend was over all too quickly and I had to catch my train whilst Mrs S had to drive back to Devon. But there will be other occasions and they can’t come quick enough! Time spent laughing with good friends is the elixir of life…