Day 5

Saturday, July 15, it was breakfast, computer lab and the garden. I was settling into a routine. Choir rehearsal was 9:00 till 11:30am

This day I was in the group that was scheduled to go to Cheltenham. On the previous Thursday, some of the others, who had gone to Cheltenham instead of Gloucester, reported that there was not much to do but shop, and that there was not much to see that had historical significance. I decided to join a "rebel" group to visit the historic city of Bath.

There were about 10 of us who got off the bus at Cheltenham and went to the train station and bought train tickets to Bath. Bath is very interesting. It gets it's name from the Roman baths that were located there back in the first century. Archeologists have excavated a good portion of the Roman baths and it is fascinating. The tour was with a personal hand held phone type instrument that you punch in the number of the item you want to know more about, and a description is played to you.

We went on another double decker bus to tour the city of Bath, which is very hilly. It reminds me of San Francisco. The flowers of Bath are the most beautiful I have ever seen. The people of Bath are always winning awards for their flowers.

This is where the the fun began: Kim knew of the lovely little town of Bradford on Avon (not the same Avon as Stratford) and wanted to go there to show it to us. Five of us decided to join her. We bought train tickets to Bradford on Avon and also the return tickets to Cheltenham to meet the bus back to Hartpury. The ticket seller at the train station assured us that the train would run till after 11:00pm, so getting back to Gloucester wouldn't be a problem, even if we missed the bus from Cheltenham.

Bradford was indeed a lovely little town. kind of like a mini Bath with hilly terrain. Kim showed us a tiny little church that must have been a 1000 years old. Unfortunately it was not open. We settled on a pub for our dinner. This pub featured outside dining, with a waitress. I can't remember what I had but I think it must have been pretty good, but not memorable.

After walking around Bradford for a while,it was getting pretty late, so we decided we had better get over to the train station for our return trip. After standing on the platform for a considerable length of time, we realized there must be some trouble with one of the trains. From the information listed on the schedule monitor in the station, (There was no station attendant. This was Saturday night in a very small town.) we learned of the cancellation of some of the scheduled train stops that directly affected us.

Kim talked a cab driver with a van into taking us from Bradford to Bath. No problem, in fact Kim had the cab driver stop for a magnificent view of Bradford from the top of the mountain. At the Bath train station, we just missed the train to Bristol. We caught the next one and arrived at Bristol. Oops, the last train to either Cheltenham or Gloucester had just left. I guess the guy who sold us our tickets forgot it was Saturday.

Undeterred, Kim visited with a cabbie and secured for us a ride back to Hartpury. It was one of those old timey looking black London Cabs. It was actually new and had two jump seats in the back in addition to the back seat. I sat in the jump seat by the driver. I am just glad there were six of us to split the 60 pound ($90.00) cab fare. The ride from Bristol to Hartpury was well over an hour long. We got in about 11:00pm.

Sandy later gave the other five members of the Bradford excursion a little black London Cab Christmas ornament to remind us of the trip. Thanks Sandy.

I got to bed closer to my regular bedtime that night.

End Day 5