TADS #31:Bristol to Bath (or Ah, the Beautiful Sparkling Spring Water of Bath - in Avon).

"Oh! Who can ever be tired of Bath?" - Jane Austen.

"Ah, the Beautiful Sparkling Healthy Spa Water of Bath, in Avon". - I Hate Nerys Hughes (From the Heart), Half Man Half Biscuit.

Yes, I know the Clifton Suspension Bridge (below) is in Bristol, not Bath. But last weekend's TADS two dayer was such an epic that it took in both the West Country big hitters (even if we didn't walk the entire distance between them) and unlike 2016's rained off South Downs stroll and our 2018 attempt to link Swanage and Brighton which came to a premature end when heavy winds nearly blew us off Old Harry Rocks into the sea (but like 2017's hot and long Ridgeway stroll) we actually, more, or less, completed it.

Two of us anyway! The weekend had begun on Friday night when I'd taken the train down into Bath, arriving just in time to see the sun coming down over its gorgeous Georgian terraces. I met my old friend Neill and we had a pint or three in The Bell and The Star and then I crashed at the lovely place he shares with his partner Sue and their two charming kids.

The next morning he made me coffee and egg on toast for breakfast in the garden and we got the bus into the city centre, stocking up on veggie sausage rolls before meeting up with Shep, Adam, and Teresa near Bath Spa station at noon. Quorate, we departed for a roughly circular path that would take us out into the surrounding countryside and back into Bath to see the city itself.

That was the plan, anyway, but we don't stand on ceremony too hard. We were soon crossing the Avon on the pedestrian Halfpenny Bridge. The Avon is one of many rivers of that name. This one runs 75 miles from Acton Turville in Gloucestershire to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth. In 1877 the Halfpenny Bridge, then a toll bridge, collapsed into it under the weight of a large crowd on their way to the Bath and West Agricultural Show (some miles away, according to Neill) and approximately ten people died. Approximately! The old days!

Widcombe, a picturesque district of Bath, sits on the other side of the Avon. We crossed a couple of busy roads and started climbing a long steep hill. I'd mistakenly thought Bath was flat but that's only because the city itself rests in the Avon valley. I'd hoped to take people to see Widcombe Crescent (fourteen Georgian houses with mansard roofs built in 1808 by Thomas Baldwin, one of Bath's chief Georgian architects) but Neill said it wasn't worth seeing. We'd be seeing plenty of Georgian architecture as it was.

Instead, we kept ascending to the right side of Prior Park, a National Trust property, before reaching Prior Park College where some kind of function was taking place that looked as if it might be worth gatecrashing if we didn't have our minds on loftier concerns. Next we were on a footpath named The Rockery and soon on the amusingly named Drungway where the views were quite spectacular and benches were presented in front of us to enjoy those views.

We kept on. Down to the pretty village of Monkton Combe. There was a pub there after all. The village has many variant names but we're sticking with Monkton Combe. It was originally owned by the monks of Bath Abbey and its railway station, no longer there, was the one (disputed it turned out) featured in the 1953 Ealing comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt with Stanley Holloway and Sid James, a film I watched a few Xmas Eves ago with my parents while nursing a warm can of bitter!

Monkton Combe also 'boasts' of a 'village lock-up', usually used for confinement of drunks (Shep and I had seen one on stage VI of the London LOOP in Ewell) but we were more interested in where those drunks might have got their drink in the first place! Perhaps the charming Wheelwright's Arms.

We'd normally, for the most part, partake of a local ale on a TADS trek but it was so hot it was lagers all round. At least they were mostly of the local Sulis type. We sat in the shade of a secluded beer garden and some of us ate pasties while I bored people by telling them that Richard Stilgoe (it's not such a young audience these days) went to Monkton Combe school, something of a haven for poshoes!

On leaving the pub we cut through the (now empty for the summer) school, looked out at its huge (also empty) cricket ground (a grim reminder of how the other half lives at a time when inner city schools are having to send kids home because they can't afford to keep the schools open, but, hey, if you voted Tory don't complain - you're getting the austerity you voted for), and passed along a footpath that soon brought us out at the tourist, picnic, and fishing friendly Dundas aqueduct!

It's on the Kennet & Avon canal and as we were in the Dundas Arms on the same canal, in Kintbury, on the May TADS walk we started to wonder who this Dundas character was. Research done while writing this piece can confirm it's one Charles Dundas (1751-1832), the first chairman of the Kennet & Avon Canal Company! Anyway, the aqueduct named after him is (nearly) as nice as the pub named after him! One distinct disadvantage!

We'd be following the Kennet & Avon pretty much all the way as it curved round back into Bath.We'd skirt Claverton and in 5k we'd arrive in Bathampton for another pub stop but, along the way, constantly swerving to avoid cyclists (not slagging them off btw, love cycling), saying hi to dog walkers and holiday makers, and admiring the boats. Some were pretty. Some had seen better days. The one with the legend 'BREXIT' on its side may have looked a bit crap but unlike Brexit itself it was still afloat and didn't seem to be occupied by a nest of the most amoral vipers you could ever wish to destroy the country.

Once we'd all agreed that Brexit was a pile of shit peddled by racists, liars, and absolute fucking imbeciles we continued along. The weather and the scenery was too nice to even let Boris fucking Johnson ruin our day (he'll ruin our lives and the country (even more) soon enough).

I felt envious of the swan and its cygnets, ignorant of such human concerns. But I was in a pub now, on holiday, in the sunshine, with four great friends so I didn't stay glum or ponder politics for too long. A brace of pints went down steadily and soon we were back on the towpath heading into Bath proper. The George Inn had been a thoroughly pleasant stop and the sunbathers, pleasure cruisers, and afternoon drinkers of Bathampton had all contributed to a very relaxed vibe indeed. I always think having fun is the best way of annoying Tories and Brexiters. Most of them genuinely seem to abhor the concept of doing anything for any other reason than to make money or hurt other people.

Bathampton was another place that suffered Beeching's Axe (I was hoping at this point that Shep would launch into a rendition of "Oh Dr Beeching, what have you done. There once were lots of trains to catch but soon there will be none" in 'honour' of another austerity mad Tory tosspot but he told me he'd not drunk enough yet) but a more unique claim to fame is that, thanks to a Mr William Harbutt, it is the home of Plasticine. As Adam joked it's been responsible for providing kids with endless hours of fun and then choking them for generations.

Another 2k on we arrived, after passing under a couple of delightful bridges, into Sydney Gardens and, I'd say, Bath proper. Originally Bath Vauxhall Gardens they are now the only remaining 18c pleasure garden (or 'vauxhall' after the one there) in the country. Laid out to the plans of our man, Thomas Baldwin.

Jane Austen, who is said to have hated her time in Bath and the city itself - not something that's prevented the city making her a selling point, would attend promenades and 'public breakfasts' there and even now many of the buildings are listed, even the toilets! Sally Lunn buns were once served here and other activities partaken of were music, dancing, fireworks, card-playing, and even, get this, 'newspaper reading'. It sounds like the sort of place I could feel quite at home in.

But we didn't stay long. We had places to go, buildings to see, drinks to drink. Passing round the back of the Holbourne Museum (paintings by the likes of Gainsborough, Ramsay, Stubbs, and Zoffany are held there and it's built to a design by Charles Harcourt Masters, Thomas Baldwin's not being implemented) on to Great Pulteney Street, the widest and grandest avenue in all Bath - designed in part by Baldwin of course. I stayed here nearly twenty years ago on my first real weekend exploration of the city.

We'd crossed Laura Place (Jane Austen and William Wilberforce lived nearby, not together) and were soon on Pulteney Bridge. We'd completed our 14.5k loop. Sir William Pulteney (1729-1805) was a Scottish landowner who was a patron of both Thomas Telford and Robert Adam. Built between 1769 & 1774 and designed by Robert Adam, the bridge is one of only four in the world to have shops on it. The others being the Rialto in Venice, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, and, representing Germany, the Kramerbrucke in Erfurt.

At the other end of the bridge you're presented with spectacular views of both the weir and Bath Abbey. I'd planned to take my friends on a tour of Bath's Georgian architecture (Queen Square, Gay Street, The Circus, The Royal Crescent) and show them obelisks, ha-has, Ionic columns, and mansard roofs while regaling them with tales of John Wood the Elder, John Wood the Younger, George II, Druids, and the Baedeker Blitz but they just wanted to go to the pub.

Ah well, I'm not one to spoil a party - and I'd seen it all before anyway (and hopefully) will again so we found room upstairs in The Raven (very friendly bar staff) and set about putting the world to rights. Although I did force them to listen to a little bit more Bath spiel. I'd written it all out, ffs, on pen and paper like in the old days.

Bath, then Aquae Sulis, became a spa around 60AD when the Romans built baths though hot springs were known of before that. Bath Abbey was founded in the 7th century and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th. In the 17th century, claims were made for the curative properties of the water and it was that century, and even more so the 18th, that saw Bath's heyday of Georgian architecture, grumpy Jane Austen (strictly speaking early 19c), and Beau Nash - a 'dandy' from Swansea who held the job as Bath's master of ceremonies for an amazing 57 years! It's even more striking that, at one point, he was holding the same position in, quite far away really, Tunbridge Wells. He even managed to find a time for a big ol' quarrel with methodist preacher John Wesley!

Notable Bathonians include, and some of these claims are a little tenuous, Leo McKern, Andrew Lincoln, Tears for Fears, Gainsborough, all our aforementioned architect friends, Russell Howard, Bill Bailey, Haile Selassie (who stayed there during WWII), Ken Loach, Manolo Blahnik, Sally Lunn, Sir Henry Cole (V&A, Xmas cards, etc;), Chris Patten, both William Pitts, Charles Dickens, the Bowdlers, Jacqueline Wilson, Mary Shelley, Peter Gabriel, Alison Goldfrapp, Peter Hamill, Jeremy Guscott, Harry Partch, and Horatio Nelson!

Phew. That's quite a list. Made me a little thirsty so we supped up, bade Neill farewell as he disappeared into the now thin night air to meet other friends, and the four of us - just the four original TADS all together at the same time which was something of a rarity - headed to the tackily named and decorated, but totally veggie and with commanding views of Bath Abbey (see Shep's photo below), Indian Temptation for food (overpriced poppadums), more drinks, and an emotional chat about our dearly departed mate Bugsy.

After that we had a couple more drinks in The Bell where there was great music playing, a great atmosphere, and a dog on the dancefloor. What's not to like? Finishing up there we headed into town with Adam, for some reason, asking people if they were insured and took the bus up to Bath University (I was ridiculously overcharged - £7.50 - and they couldn't change it back, I couldn't be bothered to argue the toss) where we were to stay the night.

Quite appropriate really as its the alma mater of at least two TADS. Debutante Neill and Valia. It's a big place. Neill had told us earlier that Bath's population jumps from 90,000 to 150,000 when the students are in town. We were able to check in until 4am (!) and arrived just after midnight. We all headed straight to our rooms, even though Shep and I inadvisably tried to source some more booze, and, after a fashion, I slept reasonably well. There was certainly no way I could forget to charge my phone up (see photo above).

Next morning I rang Shep and then Adam and we all met in the refectory for a veggie breakfast. Despite the overlong wait for cutlery and veggie sausages it was perfectly decent. Adam and Teresa, who were off to see the wonderful Billy Bragg in Portsmouth that evening, gave me and Shep a lift to Keynsham where we would be starting our walk.

My initial idea was to walk all the way from Bath to Bristol but it looked so far we'd not have had energy left to look round Bristol. We corrected ourselves after our one brief wrong turn and soon we were heading north over the Avon and then down on that river's banks where the Chew (which has come some seventeen miles from Chewton Mendip) enters the Avon.

The Avon was beautiful in the July sunshine. Rivers are neither, generally, as accessible or as straight a path as canals but often they're more beautiful. The Avon proved no exception and, that was just as well, as we'd be following it for 7.5k until we reached our first stop.

Under bridges, past pylons, observing rowers and other boaters, dipping in and out of the shade and chatting away we were at Crew's Hole quicker than I expected so we came off the river for a bit to visit The Bull's Inn. It wasn't the worst pub in TADS history (that honour still goes to The Harrow Inn in Ightham Common) but it certainly wasn't the best. No ale on tap, a grumpy barmaid, and rowing on TV at a loud volume playing to nobody at all. We sat on the patio, supped a lager each, and headed off. No need for any two pint mistakes here.

Crew's Hole itself was pleasant enough, there's some kind of chimney designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (he'd been cropping up again soon, sure enough) overlooking the place and it marked, nominally, our entry into Bristol. Another 1.5k and the Avon split. Instead of following the actual river south we took the Feeder Canal through the surprisingly wild Netham Park, took a bridge over that canal, and walked a long hot rather dull stretch down Feeder Road and Cattle Market Road. Very much the post-industrial outskirts of Bristol, though with some very pretty flowers growing by the water.

We carried past tower blocks, occasionally crossing the road to look at the muddy banks of the Avon and walked for some time as we got closer to the Bristol action. A Paul Weller poster had been amusingly graffitied and there was an advert for a festival in Cornwall that featured an appearance by Emily Maitlis. You'll wanna get some good gear in for that. I hear her sets are absolutely fuckin' banging!

Eventually we came out into the Floating Harbour and had a cold Sulis lager from one of the multitude of bars in what was now absolutely scorching sunshine. It seemed like half of Bristol was down here to enjoy the sun, show off their best clothes, and generally mooch about. It was a lovely vibe. I could quite get used to it.

But we looked at some cranes, admired a replica of the Mathew (the ship that John Cabot sailed from Bristol to North America in in 1497, possibly Newfoundland - it's disputed). The Mathew is a pretty big deal but the Floating Harbour has one bigger star and we paid it a cursory visit. You need to pay to go on and look round Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Britain so we peered through the gate and had a look at a shop that surely must have been full of Keep Calm and Carry On tat.

The SS Great Britain was the world's longest passenger ship and between 1845 and 1853 was used for service between Bristol and New York City. It was, in fact, the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic in the year of 1845, a journey which took fourteen days (Shep made an impressively accurate, if still incorrect guess). Later she (boats are always female it seems) carried thousands of immigrants to Australia. She sank somewhere near the Falkland Islands and in 1970, former Wolverhampton Wanderers owner Jack Hayward paid for her to be raised, repaired, and towed back to Bristol where she still proudly stands. A tourist sight, a museum, and a crucial piece of British (world even) engineering history.

We left the Floating Harbour, passed a rather confusing message painted on some factory doors, stopped for a bag of crisps, and moved back into Bristol's post-industrial heartlands. It was suddenly quiet again and soon we crossed the Avon on the wide and flat Ashton Avenue Bridge. On the other side there were a few people, for some reason, tightrope walking. People do strange things with their weekends. Walking from Keynsham to Bristol, for example.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge had finally come into view. I'd seen it a few times but I'd not walked across and I'd long wanted to. I once joked my ambition was to lob a tub of St Ivel Gold from it but I think I'd have been arrested if I tried that. Or I'd kill some poor bastard in a skiff below.

We hadn't even got there yet though. Like most large things it's further away than it looks. That's how perspective works. We walked along the banks of the Avon until my phone told me we'd simply end up passing under the bridge so we turned back and took a pretty steep (especially in the heat, especially after two pints, especially after two days of walking) hill that zigged and zagged its way surely upwards past some very impressive looking abodes.

Shep was getting a touch nervous about the height and I must admit when I saw the sign reading "WEAK BRIDGE" as we reached it so was I. The joggers running over it seemed less concerned and, in fact, there were family parties, an ice cream van, and even a little visitor centre on the Somerset side. Oh, and a sign for the Samaritans. We do visit a few popular suicide spots on our walks!

Built by William Henry Barlow (St Pancras terminal) and John Hawkshaw (the Circle Line) to an earlier design by, you guessed it, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the bridge opened in 1864. In 1979 it witnessed the world's first modern bungee jump (no thanks), in 2003 Concorde's last flight, and in 2012 an Olympic torch handover. Georgie Fame's wife, Nicolette Powell, is one of many who jumped to her death from the bridge.

We crossed pretty quickly. It was a little windy (nothing too mad) and it shook a bit when large vehicles crossed but the distance down to the muddy Avon waters was both awesome and a little frightening. I felt a little relieved to be back on terra firma and we had a brief look at the Clifton Observatory (for we were now in Clifton) that was built as a corn windmill in 1766 and later converted for snuff and now has a camera obscura. After that we popped into a hotel bar beer garden but for a photo op rather than a beer (too long a queue for drinks) and headed back down the hill.

I'd planned to take Shep for a tour across Clifton Downs, Whiteladies Road and Black Boy Hill (apparently it's a common myth that these roads are named for Bristol's slaving past and in fact owe their names to former pubs. Charles II, it transpires, was known as the 'black boy' because of his dark hair), and the Cabot Tower (built in the 1890s to commemorate Cabot's Mathew journey to North America. Cabot was an Italian navigator commissioned by Henry VII) but, as is so often the case, we were running out of time.

So, instead, we headed circuitously - and down some pretty steep hills, back towards the Floating Harbour - but this time the other side. A cold drink had won out over my planned tour around College Green, City Hall (built after WWII, architect:Vincent Harris), the cathedral (built between 1220 & 1887 in a mix of Norman and Gothic styles), Christmas Steps (just for the name and the Mogwai reference really), and the Exchange (John Wood the Elder on a trip away from Bath it seems) which is noted for still having a clock that shows both Greenwich Mean Time and local Bristol time.

Something that had to be regulated once the railways were built or people would miss their trains. It's been both a coffee house and a tavern and was once used for business transactions involving West Indian and Guinean slaves! The four bronze tables outside are called 'nails' and date back to 16c/17c, they're rumoured to be the reason we say "pay on the nail".

I had lots of Bristol history and Shep was gonna hear it if he liked it or not. Now with a beer by the harbour he was relaxed enough to listen as I told him that Bristol is ranked between 8th and 10th biggest city in the UK and began life as Brycgstow ("the place on the bridge") and from the thirteenth century until the eighteenth was in the UK top 3 until the Industrial Revolution saw the rise of places like Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham.

At the height of the Bristol slave trade two thousand ships carried an astonishing, and sickening, 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas. These days Bristol is a much more PC place. Thankfully. It's twinned with such big hitters as Bordeaux, Hanover, Porto, Tbilisi, and Guangzhou and in 2010 PRS For Music (grrr!!!) called it "the most musical city in the UK". Certainly any city that can boast the likes of Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, The Pop Group, Roni Size, Way Out West, The Blue Aeroplanes, DJ Krust, Pigbag, Chaos UK, and The Brilliant Corners (whose line "oh, the smell from the Avon made the living room hell" was my constant earworm that day) deserves to be in the reckoning - even if some Mancunians might be displeased!

Another interesting sight that we didn't see is the Llandoger Trow. Dating from 1664 (but, sadly, now closed) this pub is named after Llandogo in Monmouthshire where they built trows (cargo boats used on both the Severn and the Wye) and it's said to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write of the Admiral Benbow pub in Treasure Island.

That's not even its most impressive literary claim! The story goes that Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk in the Llandoger Trow here and Selkirk told Defoe about the time he'd spent four years and four months as a castaway on the South Pacific island of Juan Fernandez, going on to inspire the character of Robinson Crusoe. More prosaically, the Trow became a Berni Inn in 1962 and appeared in Most Haunted with Yvette Fielding in 2007!

Private Woodes Rogers (c.1679-1732) lived on Queen's Square (which we did pass through). Rogers circumnavigated the globe between 1701 and 1711 and rescued Selkirk from Juan Fernandez. I was curious as to the island's name and exact whereabouts and discovered that it's 416 miles off the coast of Chile and is named for Juan Fernandez himself (c.1536-1604) who worked out the fastest route from Callao in Peru to Valparaiso in Chile. Nine hundred people live there now so Selkirk/Crusoe would be less lonely. Info freako! There is no end to what I want to know!

But it was time to head home. We passed St Mary Redcliffe church and walked on into Templemeads station (voted one of Britain's ten best by Simon Jenkins, named for the neaby Temple church now gutted by WWII bombing, and with an original terminus designed by IKB - obvs) where we picked up some overpriced GWR train tickets and set off home.

Shep's panic (and mine, tbh) was averted when a trolley came down the aisle and we availed ourselves of some train booze. He got off at Reading. I carried on to Paddington and then home. I was sad that the weekend was over but it'd been a great one. The next TADS walk will be in Canterbury in August and, hopefully, we'll have some old faces back, maybe some new ones. I'll be using the fact it's my birthday weekend as leverage. Gert lush!