Virginia creeper in Bath
Buildings in Bath
Traffic in Bath
The hill in Bradford
A confrontation in Bradford
A mixed day. Started off with a little time in a Macca's in West Twerton, a suburb of Bath. Got some blogging catch-up done, and Susie did some emailing — discovered that some of the emails she thought had been sent had not in fact gone. This is probably because Macca's, most frustratingly, drops our connection from time to time, and when she originally sent the emails, she didn't notice that we were offline. Anyway, hopefully, we've caught everybody up by now.
Came out after two hours, to find that we had left the headlights on. Another call to RAC, a most obliging mechanic, and we were on our way about an hour later. We went to the only Park and Ride for Bath that is not size restricted, only to find that the road leading to the P&R is not only width restricted to 6 feet, but is an 18% grade up to it from both directions - more than Gertie is currently capable of. So we went down to a local Sainsbury's, had lunch in the carpark. We called Richard from there — it was going on 3pm — and found that the engine he thought he had acquired had fallen through, so the plan is now to take the van up to him tomorrow, and to hire another van for the 2 weeks it will take to get the job done. We should have done this three weeks ago!!
We've gone back to our White Horse layby. On the way, we passed through Bath and were most impressed by its rows of Edwardian buildings, and the Virginia creeper kissing some of its buildings with red. But we were not impressed by the traffic, which was chaotic in parts!
We also passed through Bradford-on-Avon, coming down a very steep (18%), long narrow slope into the town, at the foot of which is a one-lane section in which we met a horse-trailer coming the other way. The roads in the UK depend for a large part on the goodwill of those driving on them.
We will probably do a little Macca's in Trowbridge tomorrow before driving up to Bourton-on-the-Water where there are a couple of interesting museums, and which will put us in range of Richard for about 3pm.
Distance driven — today, 106 miles ( 171 km ); to date, 8,211 miles ( 13,215 km )
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