New Bathroom - Buying Tiles

We are *finally* getting our new bathroom...! The quote is in, the taps have been chosen and work is due to start in the next couple of weeks, this does of course mean that for the duration we will have some considerable upheaval to put up with (not least of which is having no means of taking a bath - I guess I'm going to have to use the showers here in the gym in Canary Wharf, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it)...So Saturday we spent doing the last of the little jobs associated with the upgrade - choosing the tiles - which (one would have thought) should have been reasonably simple, however, we really did end up going all around the houses...first stop was Rogers Ceramics, a little independent tile shop at Gatton Point, which was a really tiny place and didn't seem to have a single kind of tile for under about £25 per square meter (and as we needed 20 square meters that would have cost us about £500!)-

Next up we stopped in the Homebase in Reigate, nothing *really* grabbed us, but they did have nice plain white tiles for £7.99/m2 (or about £160 for the job) - so a step in the right direction...if only they had more than 4 boxes in stock we probably would have finished the process right there and then...

Anyway, we headed on to Dorking and Wickes next, where they had even cheaper white tiles (£6.15/m2 - or £123) and again (unfortunately) only 6 boxes in stock...!

Flyingpops went to the information desk and asked if they could order up some more, and the answer was no, they only way we could guarantee getting the whole lot from a single batch was to order them to be delivered, which would cost an extra £40! Most unhelpful...and so we ended up in Tile Base (just down the road from Wickes) -

- where the staff were extremely friendly and helpful (in stark contrast) -

- they had a *huge* palett of white tiles (all from the same batch) for £6.50/m2 (and it was "10% off day") meaning we got the whole lot for £117!  We even got a few sheets of embellishments for 99 pence each (down from £5)!

Flyingpops mum came (briging her estate car) to help us transport them all home (thanks Nanjan!), as there was absolutely no room in the Bug, and they are all now stacked up at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the work to begin! How exciting!

Sally Lunn's Bath Buns

Lunchtime in Bath, only one place to go and eat (and thank goodness we were there firmly out of season as apparently the queues can stretch all the way along the road and round the corner!), we were lucky enough only to have a wait of about 3 minutes (behind one other couple) while they cleaned bun-crumbs off the recently vacated tables, and then we were left to examine the menu...they do all sorts of imaginative things with the simple bun, from standard cream teas, right through to hollowing them out, toasting them (to turn them into a mini-edible plate known historically as a "trencher") and filling them up with boeuf bourguignon -

- I went for the Welsh Rarebit (trencher-style) with a very spicy sweet chutney (which was fantastic), and after dabbing our mouth-corners with napkins, we went down to explore the "kitchen museum" (me only banging my head 3 times in the process) -



- which is quite interesting, but really just a vehicle to sell you more buns...but hey, that's fine as they are jolly nice (we came away with 4)... ;)

Roman Baths, City of Bath Review

...and so on to the last day of the honeymoon (boo!) but we do have two weeks all-inclusive in Mexico to look forward to (29 degrees, scattered cloud at the moment, if you were wondering) in about 4 weeks time (yay!), we decided that enough was enough, and one really can't come all the way down to this neck of the woods and not manage to actually visit the city of Bath, so, failing to wake up early (as we had planned) we finally pulled into town (through the fog) mid-morning, took an interesting tour of all the local car parks, and finally found a spot not too far from the heart of the city -

- the Roman Baths being the *must* do attraction, we headed off there first, deciding to buy the combination ticket which gives you access to the Fashion Museum "for only £3 more" (although we really should have saved the money) -

- anyway, dodging the school parties (screaming and hitting each other) inside, we collected our audio tour batons, Flyingpops enquiring from the attendant as to how long the tour would take (as we had only put 4 hours on the car parking ticket), to be told that you would spend all day in there if you listened to everything, but the average visit was around 2 hours (fair enough)...the tour starts with a walk around the balcony above the main pool (extraordinarily still consisting of the original Roman engineering of driven piles, rock walls and lead sheeting to master the hot waters from the spring) the tour then leads inside, and is also actually only a very small hop from the street below, making me think we could probably have saved *all* the entrance money and just vaulted the wall (but I kept quiet having already coughed up) -



- past piles of scattered stone work (reclaimed from around the county where it had scattered into various buildings/fields/walls over the intervening years), and then a nice wooden model showing roughly how it all would have appeared when the Romans originally assembled it -

- past the emergency overflow, which I can imagine getting rather full in the days when Romans would have been jumping in and out of the main pool all day -

- and then out, stepping on the same stones as the Roman bathers -


- wandering around the side rooms (very dimly lit) to see the remains of the hypocaust (under floor heating) in the steam room -

- the frigidarium (plunge pool for the brave/foolhardy) where projected figures wandered the walls, removing and replacing togas as if unquiet ghosts still going about their hygiene routine -

- then out stepping over the plumbing channel that trickles the hot water from the spring itself into the main pool (we tested the water, contrary to the warning signs on the wall, and it's just a little cooler than I would want a bath at home to be, so actually pretty hot, especially as the place used to have a high roof back in Roman times *and* it was a rather chilly day) -

- and past some original Roman lead piping that used to feed the pools on the far side -

- then to the exit, walking past the hot spring itself -

- and some rather yucky looking tertiary pools preserved by small mist spraying devices (which also help the slime and mould to flourish under the bright lights), and then, even though I had a very bad childhood memory of the experience, we took the waters (again, in my case), it being free to do so, if in possession of a tour ticket -

- and it tasted precisely as I imagine my own bath water to taste after I've finished washing, rather unpleasant, but it didn't (as I seemed to remember) taste at all of sulphur, so that was a pleasant surprise, if not much of a consolation...anyway, we finished our visit off with a trip through the gift shop (as you do), noting with amusement Harry Potter books in Latin -

- and casting about my mind unsuccessfully for anyone I disliked enough to bring them back some of the spa water -

- and then the visit was over, taking us roughly the "average" two hours...

The fashion museum, which was about a ten minute walk away (up a hill past the Royal Mineral Water Hospital...those poor souls with Rheumatic diseases in the 1700s...) -


- we spent more time getting to and from than actually in. A bit of a waste of time, the only people in there other than us were a bunch of students who were miserably filling out work sheets and sulking, so you can probably skip this "attraction" and save yourself a few quid (imho) unless you really want to see how uncomfortable it was to wear a corset, although when we got to that (potential highlight) there was no attendant to explain how to go about putting it on, I never even took the lense cap off...

Anyway, then it was time for lunch, and the last of the touristy *musts* (recommended by my folks) of the city was calling... ;)

Back from Honeymoon

Wow, actually found time for a bit of typing...! ;) Now, we'll cover the wedding, and the last twelve months of preparations in much more detail in posts to come, but suffice it to say (for now) that everything went absolutely perfectly on the day, it didn't pass too quickly, as I had feared it may have done (as some grooms have told me they had experienced their wedding days as a noisy blur), and I managed to get through everything - completing service, speech and first dance - without error, and with appropriate reactions (i.e. laughter at jokes, cheering at dance steps etc. rather than visa-versa), and all with emotion, but not floods of uncontrollable ones...

A minor miracle.

The honeymoon (this first mini-one before Mexico in May) was awesome, starting (on the wedding night) with a night in the incredible Nutfield Priory (thanks to Mum and Dad for that!), followed by a few days exploring Bath from the perfectly located Bath Lodge Hotel (a converted castle) where we had the top tower and most of the roof (complete with battlements) as our private balcony (as you may have already seen)...Day 1 (as we spent much of it finishing off from the wedding, eating lunch and travelling down there) we just stayed in the hotel, Day 2 we went down to see Wookey Hole (being led a bit of a merry dance by the sat-nav as you can see from the pictures), actually managed to take some half-way decent shots underground by bracing my camera against the slimy walls (while enduring drips from the stalactites), jeered at the dinosaurs-alongside-cavemen garden, watched how to make paper from bits of cotton, got hopelessly lost in the mirror maze (it was actually rather scary), bought some of the "cave aged" cheese (not tried it yet, but it smelt rather good), then drove into the nearby (and very small) city of Wells -

- for a spot of lunch -


- then just had a nice walk around town (stopping at a few charity shops to buy books) and just taking in the scenery-


- supper that night was in a 14th Century pub called "The George Inn" -


- just simple food (exactly what I needed as my body rediscovered that it actually was able to eat (the build up to the wedding having deleted my hunger almost entirely) -


Day 3 to come (Safari Park!)... ;)

Bath Lodge Hotel in Pictures