Taking The Wife Away

It was The Wife’s birthday yesterday and so I decided a while back to take her away for the weekend. Subsequent plans meant I had to change it to just a couple of days and so with Thursday and Friday booked off work, I surprised her on Thursday morning by telling her to pack a suitcase for a couple of nights away.

Once she’d packed, we jumped into the car and headed towards the motorway. It was only at this point that I told her of the itinerary. We would be heading to Winchester for the day, staying in a hotel overnight before driving to Bath the next day. Then it would be back to the hotel and head home on the Saturday.

After a couple of hours in the car we arrived in Winchester and found somewhere to park. We took advantage of being National Trust members and visited the Winchester City Mill, learning all about the history of the 18th century mill. After this we made our way to the cathedral to have a look around it but when we discovered it was going to cost about £30 to go in, decided that a walk around the grounds would have to suffice.

We managed to find the remains of Wolvesey Castle so that killed a bit of time before we enjoyed a light lunch at a local pizzeria sat in the sunshine. We strolled through the town and made our way back to the car for the journey to our hotel.

The one we were staying in, Audleys Wood Hotel, belongs to the same group as the one we had got married in so they always feel that little bit special to us. We had dinner booked in the restaurant in the evening so we killed some time walking around the grounds and had a drink in the bar.

The next morning, after polishing off a room-service breakfast that could have fed 4 people, it was back into the car for the drive down to Bath. After negotiating the traffic and finding a car park we walked into the center of town and booked tickets for a bus tour but before we went on that we did a tower tour of the Abbey.

This involved climbing up a few hundred stairs through the Abbey, into the bell-ringing room, up to the bell tower, behind the clockface and up to the roof. From there you could see all around the Bath and Wells.

We took plenty of photos while we were up there and after the long climb down we boarded our bus for an open-top tour of the city. It really is a picturesque city, with some great architecture. As a tour though, it was a bit rubbish, the voiceover on the commentary was really bland, far too loud and the earphones don’t actually fit in your ears!

An hour later, and back at our starting point, we then visited the famous Roman Baths, after which the place was named. The tour around here took quite a while which I wasn’t expecting, there was a lot to see and take in. I suppose for the money they need to put on a bit of a show!

This was followed by tea and cake at Sally Lunn’s famous tea shop before we decided to head back to the hotel to finish off the day.