Saturday, October 13, 2007

Autumn break

Here is my dear little car, home at last from the garage. It may be old and have an incredibly high mileage but I love it. Any resemblance to my Aga is almost purely coincidental.

On Wednesday, we packed up the car and headed for Bath, a treat the dear old lovable MM had planned to make up for the fact that I missed out on a summer holiday this year. We have been to Bath on many occasions but I never tire of doing the Jane Austen tours, visiting the Abbey , the Pump Rooms and the Roman Baths. I managed to re-read Northanger Abbey and Persuasion for the thousandth time, to put me in the right mood for the visit.

I love the architecture and the river. I managed to get this shot of Pulteney Bridge but all my other shots have intrusive modern vehicles or crowds of people in them so I'll settle for this postcard of the Crescent.











We stayed in a hotel in Henrietta Street. The location was ideal, the online description perfect, the reality not to be mentioned, unfortunately. We decided not to sue but we won't be recommending it. Still, having negotiated the STAIRS (no lift) from our top floor room and skipped the inedible breakfast, it was lovely to walk the few yards to Laura Place (temporary home to the Dowager Countess Dalrymple and her daughter, the Honourable Miss Carteret, as all JA readers will know) and then on to Pulteney Bridge.


On all our previous visits to Bath we have attempted to visit the American Museum at Claverton Down but it has always been closed to the public on those particular days. This time I made good use of their website to plan my visit.


The American Museum in Britain is the only museum devoted to American decorative arts. There is a permanent collection of folk art and special exhibitions which change from year to year; the current one being The Dollar Princesses. There are fifteen period rooms to visit, all fitted out with furniture and artifacts shipped from America and rebuilt exactly, including the wall panelling.


This is the eighteenth century Conkey's Tavern, shipped from Massachusetts. Until recent Health and Safety regulations interfered, gingerbread was cooked every day in the little oven by the fire. Now it has to be brought in from the modern kitchen to be served by a buxom lady in costume. It is worth a trip just to taste it.




There are rooms devoted to various groups such as the Shakers and Amish. There are elegant drawing rooms, simple pioneer living rooms, an extravagant New Orleans bedroom and many more. The museum also houses a unique collection of quilts, rugs and Navajo blankets.

We had afternoon tea outside on the terrace, overlooking Claverton Down. The MM had some more of the delicious gingerbread but I wanted to try some snicker doodle, in honour of all my American blogging friends. Jolly good it was too; I'd love to have the recipe.

On Thursday evening, son Andrew and his Anna came over from Bristol and we went for a deliciously different meal at Yak Yeti Yak, the highly acclaimed Nepalese restaurant in Bath. The perfect end to our short stay in the city.

14 comments:

  1. Oooh, Bath looks as delightful as ever - one of my favourite cities. I thought of moving there at one time but it is, apparently, very damp and therefore not good for the joints!!

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  2. It was certainly very misty in the morning and evening. I suppose we have to think of these things as the joints get older!

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  3. Here's real diversity, a British lady with a bit of Irish in 'er waxes eloquent about a trip to Bath causing a certain other lady from the UK and another from the US to wish they had been there. To top that off, they went to Nepalese restaurant. What fun.

    Misty? We were in England and Scotland for 10 days late May and early June and I don't remember a single really sunny day. Had a great time anyway.

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  4. We do get sunshine sometimes, honestly! We actually had a heatwave last year! I can wax lyrical about Bath, Chester, Oxford, York and Edinburgh - all beautiful cities in different ways.

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  5. Ditto, although we missed Oxford. We stayed too long in Edinburgh because we fell in love with it. So we didn't get to Loch Ness or the North Sea either and we had to get back to London for the flight home.

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  6. Haven't been to the American Museum for nearly 30 years, probably. We used to go at least once a year, when we stayed with my great-aunt in Warminster. I can recall the smell and taste of that gingerbread, more vivdly than I can yesterday's lunch. There is absolutely nothing in this world like it! What a SHAME that H&S rules have kicked in and the whole experience has to be sanitised. I stil have the slim recipe book I bought there when I was 12 and still use that recipe in preference to all others when making gingerbread. But, delicious as it is, it never touches the experience of eating it straight from the oven in that dark and smoky kitchen at Claverton. Hmmm, what a lovely, nostalgic way to start the morning - I shall smell it all day in my 'mind's nose'!!. Thank you!

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  7. Juliet: I'd be forever in your debt if you would let me have the gingerbread recipe in time for me to make some for my husband's birthday on 4 November. I looked for a recipe book but couldn't find one there.

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  8. Post a picture of your Aga, so we can see for ourselves.

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  9. I put a link to it in the post - there's a picture in an old post called My Aga didn't melt the ice caps.

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  10. Now I see the resemblance to your car. Beautiful. I don't remember seeing it, but I've been so distracted lately.

    I should steal part of the your blog name for myself.

    Recycling? I had a conversation awhile back with a recycling leader who admitted that recycled objects get tossed into the same dump as the regular garbage.

    Why are we doing then? To get everyone to think about the environment ... and think of it I am. The big garbage trucks have a separate run around town picking up the carefully putative recycled stuff in separate bins when they could pick up everything at one time and save tons of money and exhaust fumes.

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  11. e, I guess the recycling comments refer to the Livesimply post. Our recycled goods are collected by an independent firm, not the local council's refuse collectors. I don't know what happens to the glass, paper and cans we put out, but other goods are sold at the depot. My husband bought an almost new golf club he'd been planning to spend a lot of money on at the sport shop for a few pence.

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  12. Recycling of usable stuff is a good idea. It's the bottles and plastic containers, etc. that get taken to the dump. We have various charities that will pick up furniture, appliances, etc. and other places for clothing, linens, etc.

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  13. I love love love Bath and I shall have to go again now I have looked at your pictures. I feel a bout of Persuasion coming on...

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  14. It is lovely that no-one can change the city centre. Go and wallow in Austen but don't stay at the hotel in Henrietta Street!

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I love to read your comments and promise that I will reply as soon as I can leave my garden, sewing room or kitchen!