Bath time

My only real extra-London excursion while I was in the UK was to Bath Spa, a really pretty town about one and a half hours west of the big smoke. Once again the weather gods smiled upon me, and I spent the day wandering around in the bright sunshine. Bath is just large enough for a lumbar-afflicted old codger like myself to walk around on foot without too many troubles, with lots to see like the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey and the Botanical Gardens. I also wandered through the Costume Museum and the Assembly Rooms, but I probably would only have found them really interesting if I was gay. There was a large group of French teenagers trying on corsets in the museum, but that was essentially the high point.

It cost £38 return to get out there on a train from Paddington, but the weird thing was that if I'd actually managed to go first thing in the morning, it would've cost me £108 return. That's a pretty savage markup, and it's probably aimed squarely at people who would like to live in the picturesque little area and commute to London each day. There might be people who live in London and work in Bath, but the advantages of that scenario seem a lot less convincing. The rent and expense of London combined with the earning power of Bath - right.