Hassell's Great UK/Ireland Adventure 1998

Tenby, Bristol, and Bath


Monday, June 22nd

We had breakfast in the airy dining room before checking out, and then did some shopping in Tenby. Afterwards, we headed east towards Bath, England, stopping for a couple hours in Cardiff, the capital of Wales. In Cardiff, I picked up some souvenirs for Bill's mom who's of Welsh descent, and Bill discovered a local beer made by a company called Brain. He bought several bottles to take home for people who he thought could use some. We drove on to Bristol, where we hopped out of the car long enough to take some pictures for our friend, Andy, who when asked if he's English, says, "No - I'm Bristolian." Oh, that Bristolian humour.

It was about 9pm when we finally arrived in Bath, so we had dinner, and then went to the Henrietta Hotel and checked in. We had a lovely ground floor room decorated in Victorianna, complete with four-poster bed and marble fireplace. The bed was hard as a rock, so we didn't sleep all that well.


Tuesday, June 23rd

We woke up this morning late, grumpy after the fitful night we'd had. I talked the proprietor into adding a couple extra duvets to the bed, had breakfast, then hopped in the shower. Midway through, I heard Bill yelling "no...No...NO!!!" Turns out our car had been towed away. This brings me to the subject of parking in Bath. It's nearly impossible. There are too few spaces for too many cars, and you're not allowed to park next to double yellow lines. Of course, the double lines are everywhere. And even if you do find a parking space next to a single yellow line, you're only allowed to park there for two hours. More than two hours, and the car gets towed or clamped. So parking was a constant challenge in Bath. Anyway, we dressed quickly and took a taxi to the police station to pay our fine, which was over 100 pounds! These people are serious about parking laws. (As sort of an odd kindness, the cops paid for a taxi to take us to the car pound.) What a wonderful way to start the day.

Once we'd gotten the car, it was about 1pm, and the last thing we wanted to do was park it anywhere, so we drove up into the southern Cotswolds and visited Owlpen Manor, a small mansion set in a valley surrounded by steeply-rising hills crowned with beech woods. Prince Charles has called Owlpen "The Epitome of an English Village", and he has an estate just down the road in Tewksbury. We toured the manor and gardens, arriving back in Bath about 5pm. We washed our clothes at a nearby launderette called "Lovely Wash", slipping into a nearby pub between loads. We stopped briefly at the hotel to drop the laundry off, and I made a mistake and followed an elderly woman into Henrietta House, next door to the hotel. When I got inside, I noticed that all the folks inside were elderly and infirm. Whoops. The caretaker asked if I needed anything, all the while looking at me curiously. I just said "No thanks - I think I'm a little young for this place", and headed back out the door. Then we had a late dinner at Hau Fu, a local (mediocre) Chinese restuaurant, before retiring to the hotel room.


Wednesday, June 24th

Today made up for yesterday and then some. We spent the whole day exploring Bath, visiting Bath Abbey, the Roman Baths, the Pump Room, the Royal Crescent, Pulteney Bridge and shopping. I especially enjoyed lunch at the Pump Room. The Pump Room was built 1790-1795, and became Bath's favourite meeting place for fashionable society, who congregated there to socialize and to enjoy the spa. Today, it is a spacious restaurant that reflects the prevailing classical taste of the Georgian period. Among the things that set it apart are:

Lunch was fabulous. Our starters were the twice-baked mature cheddar and chive souffle with carmelized onions, and a bowl of delicious wild mushroom soup. Entrees were egg and watercress salad in a sunflower seed roll, and chicken and ham raised pie with piccalilli and salad. Dessert for me was the sumptuous blackcurrant brulee tart, and Bill had some ice cream. Simply lovely!

After lunch, I did some shopping, picking up a tiara for my friend Liz, at the Faerie Shop, along with some post cards from a nearby gift shop.


Thursday, June 25th

This was our last full day in England. We left Bath around noon, stopping in Salisbury on our way to London, and touring Salisbury Cathedral. The cathedral was built between 1220 and 1258, and is a fine example of Gothic architecture, which is typified by tall, sharply pointed lancet windows. Its graceful spire soars to a height of 404 feet, and the cathedral boasts the oldest working clock in England which dates back to 1386. The Chapter House displays a copy of the Magna Carta from which English common law descended. In 1215, King John of England agreed to the demands of his Barons, and authorized that handwritten copies of Magna Carta be prepared on parchment, affixed with his seal, and publicly read throughout the realm. Thus he bound not only himself but his "heirs, for ever" to grant "to all freemen of our kingdom" the rights and liberties the great charter described. With Magna Carta, King John placed himself and England's future sovereigns and magistrates within the rule of law.

As Winston Churchill put it:

"Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it."

Moreover, when Englishmen left their homeland to establish colonies in the New World, they brought with them charters guaranteeing that they and their heirs would "have and enjoy all liberties and immunities of free and natural subjects." Scant generations later, when these American colonists raised arms against their mother country, they were fighting not for new freedoms but to preserve liberties that dated to the 13th century.

When representatives of the young republic of the United States gathered to draft a constitution, they turned to the legal system they knew and admired - English common law as evolved from Magna Carta. The conceptual debt to the great charter is particularly obvious. The American Constitution is "the Supreme Law of the Land," just as the rights granted by the Magna Carta were not to be arbitrarily canceled by subsequent English laws. This heritage is most clearly apparent in our Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment guarantees that "No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law", and the Sixth Amendment states that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury."

Written 575 years earlier, the Magna Carta declared: "No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, . . . or in any other way destroyed...except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice."

And so, Hassell's Great Adventure came to a close. On June 26th, we left London for home.

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