View from the top

I was up high while in Bath.   Clive and Charles were there too.  One a retired London barrister and one a bloke from The Midlands who cycles 7 miles to work every morning, does a 12 hour shift and cycles home.  Oh, and he walks the dog before going to work and when he gets home.  And he skis.  Clive had, it needs to be said, good legs.  And stamina...by the bucket-load.  You see, ankylosing spondylitis not only gets to work it's little magic on people from all walks of life but it takes a different path with every one of us lucky people.

I know you are hearing a lot about AS these days...but I've been living it, breathing it and sleeping it for 12 days whilst at The Min, so forgive me.  It's cathartic.  I need to get this out.  Stay with me.

Bath Abbey.  At night.

Our accommodation was up above the melee.  You get a different perspective on things.

I don't think the sky was as dark as it appears above.  Blame the Nikon, HP5+ or ID-11.  Or all three.

Bath is lovely.  All sandstone buildings and everything.  Crescents and things like that wot you can see in these here snaps.  John Wood the Elder did a lot of it...including The Circus and, ladies and gentlemen, The Min.

Bath is in a hollow...built, so the legend goes, like Rome, surrounded by 7 hills.  The downside is that nowadays, I'm reliably informed, that means as you are driving into the city on a lovely summer morning the first thing you notice is the pall of fumes hanging over the city.  So the sandstone buildings get black very quickly.  As, presumably, do your lungs.  That, dear readers, is the price you pay for being in the centre of All Things Beautiful, along with über-inflated property prices and a plethora of boutique shops selling pretty but useless things at über-inflated prices.

A good friend once said Bath is the graveyard of dreams...young people happen by here in their 20s, their heads full of ambition, careers, travel and stuff, fall in love with the place, can't bear to leave, end up working in the Theatre Royal as ushers for minimum wage.  Or Wetherspoons. Or Poundland.  Yes, they do exist in Bath, alongside shops like Gieves&Hawkes and Christopher Barry - the sort of shops wot don't put prices in the windows.   And you know what that means, of course - without having to ask.