text and images britt-arnhild
Just before leaving for Great Britain I bought Secred Land by Martin Palmer. An amazing book by an amazing man, a book where the reader it taken through England, Scotland and Wales to see how the people of Britain once believed themselves and the landfscape, towns and cities they created to be part f a greater, more sacred, story.
The author of this book, this man so full f knowledge and tales, met us at the station when we arrived with the train from London, took us to the hotel where we left our suitcases, and then out in a late afternoon Bath to explore the layers of this beautiful city.
Starting with the pigs. According to legend, or is it a true story(?), they were the first to be healed by the hot springs which are the pillars of Bath (ha, hot spåring pillars......ever heard of that before? Again my ignorance of a language not my mother tongue is making a barrier for me.
I am not going to give you the story of Bath, guidebooks can do that a million times better. I will, in two or three posts, give you a few images as I saw them through my eyes though, with the glasses Martin so generously let be borrow.
Like The Circus, this wonderful houses, built in a circle, modelled to be a kind of sacred pagan copy of Stonehenge.
The road circling the inner circle of The Circus was rised when the houese were built, making basement rooms (for the tenants probably, and also low gardens. A white blooming camelia was in one of the tiny gardens, greeting me "welcome to Bath".
She was accompanied by a pink clematis........addings spots of sweet colour.
From The Circle we continued up to The Royal Cresent. A place known by heart by all Jane Austen lovers. A very popular place among the country people who came in to Bath in February and March when countryside life was to cold, to boring. Built with a lovely countryside view "we can´t let the rich people miss home too much", still a short way to The Pump Room, the shops where fabric for the next evening dress could be bought, and the High Street where you could walk to see and be seen.
Walking down from The Cresent we passed a long row of the back gardens......
....we walked into one of them,
and here starts my next tale.
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But that is for another day.
