Bridge Over Bath Water

OK, back now to scenes of Bath. This is a view of the River Avon, which actually means River River. (Avon is an olde English word for river.) What's more, it's not the same River Avon that flows through the famous Stratford-upon-Avon. There are a bunch of Rivers Avon in the UK. How unoriginal.


Another bridge. This one is special because it's one of the few in all of England to ever have had buildings on it. It's one of maybe two left. Something like that. I forget what Richard said. Richard rocks, by the way.


This is the Royal Crescent, a neighborhood built for rich people in Georgian times by John Wood the Younger. The young man sunning himself is in Victoria Park, named for Queen Victoria.

Funny story about that: Bath had fallen out of fashion by the early 1800s as the Prince Regent (later George IV) preferred the seaside at Brighton. Where the monarch goes, so go all the rich wannabes. So the town fathers decided to flatter the young Princess Victoria, who would become Queen in 1837. They designed a park and botanical gardens, named it for her, and invited her to open it. At the ceremony, the queen-to-be bent over to cut the ribbon, and a gust of wind lifted her skirts. Someone in the crowd yelled out: "Oi! Look at her bandy legs!" She never set those bow legs in Bath again.