EIS – To Plymouth, England (Day 21)

EIS – To Plymouth, England (Day 21)

(9/7/2010) Leaving Cardiff, Wales we cross the Severn Bridge into England. Today our first stop is the Georgian city of Bath, famed for its Roman relics. But before we get there, we pass through the town of Pennsylvania. Next to the Roman Baths is Bath Abby.

We entered the Roman Baths and as you travel the maze path through the site, we see many statues found at the site.

One of the statues found is the head of the goddess Minerva. It is in excellent shape. She would have had a helmet on and with future excavations; they hope to find the piece. The problem, when they originally found the head no one recorded the locations of the findings.

When people came to the baths, they would make an offering to the goddess. Money found in the pool dated form as far back as Nero’s reign, between 54 and 68 AD. One of the last Roman coins found was thrown into the spring dates from the 379-395 AD.

The waters in the baths come from hot springs. Here the water is coming out and you can see the steam rising. The water must be pretty hot because there are warning signs about not touching the water at these locations.

The hot waters end up in the large pool where the Romans would use the hot healing baths. There were also rooms for a sauna, steam baths, and very hot water.

Here are a couple of Romans now. Hey, where are the togas?

As we were leaving Bath, the driver took us up a street, where buses are not allowed, to a circle of Georgian architectural buildings. There are three buildings that make up the circle. Some are in the process of having the outside cleaned as evidenced by the staging and the line of cleaned and not cleaned building.

Our next stop is Glastonbury. We are here for a lunch and sightseeing break. Carmen and I go into the Glastonbury Abby site. It is a large complex which contains the ruins of the Abby and also the burial place of the legendary King Arthur. The Abby ground is a 36 acre park which contains the Lady Chapel built between 1184 and 1186.

The ruin of the Abby includes part of the original front spire towers on either of the side of the entryway.

As we walked around we returned to the other side of and into the Lady Chapel and here, you can see part of the other building between the Lady Chapel and the Abby.

Our next stop was in the town of Widecombe-in-the-moor, yes, that is the name of the town, in Darkmoor National Park. In the park, hills topped with stone outcroppings, called Tors, and look like stone castles.

In town as in most all towns we have passed through, there is an old chapel with a cemetery around it. Stones have years from the 1600’s to the 1900’s.

The Darkmoor National Park contains wild horses. They have the run of the Park and can go anywhere they want and protected so you cannot chase them away. We saw three on the side of the road while in town and got a picture. The horses were small compared to the size of regular horses. We have seen them all over the Park, only here we were real close.

While we were driving through Darkmoor National Park to our hotel and as we have seen throughout our trip, we see more rock walls that are in good shape. Of course, not all have nice gates like this one.

We reach Plymouth and some of us will go on a harbor cruise. I say some, because this is an extra cost excursion and some chose not to go. Carmen and I go on the harbor tour and as we go around the corner into the harbor, we first pass a fort.

There were also several military vessels out at sea getting ready to come into port. In the harbor is a Royal Navy installation which had a number of surface vessels and submarines at dock.

We pass a ferry which is chain driven. A chain is underwater and a chain drive pulls the chain moving the ferry across the water. You can see the chain as it goes into the vessel on the front left side.

As we end the night and leave for our hotel, the sun is setting. The Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, from where we stood along the wharf, years earlier and you wonder if they also saw a similar sunset before they left.  We also had a drink in the pub where the Pilgrims also had their final drinks in England before heading out to North America.



Until later, Bob and Carmen – EIS.