After the Leavesden Harry Potter studio tour yesterday we
made our way to Bath. We had booked a car from Heathrow Airport, as they did
late night hire and it was an easy place to leave from. To get to Heathrow, we
had to first go back to Kings Cross station where our bags were in baggage
deposit. From there we caught the tube to Heathrow, where it was easy enough to
go straight to the car pick-up area.
We were pretty tired by the time we reached Heathrow (6pm at
night) and just wanted to pick-up the car and go. The car rental company
salesman nearly managed to get us to pay a ridiculous amount for an upgrade we
didn’t want (he was probably banking on us being fresh off a plane, unfamiliar
with the English Pound exchange rate & tired), but I happened to wander
over to check on the paperwork just as Hugh was about to sign it and pointed
out that we had originally booked a car for $250AUD, not £250. The current exchange rate was that one pound was worth $2, so we
would have been paying double what we agreed to. By the time it came to
signing, the man at the counter had obviously done all of the paperwork for the
upgrade (an Audi A4), so it ended up working in our favour. Once we put our
foot down and asked for the original car at the original price, he ended up
giving us the upgrade for only $50AUD more than the original price. The Audi
was also a diesel so it probably ended up saving us money in fuel (we fueled
up only once during the 4 days we had the car, right before we returned it).
The first night that we had the car
we didn’t think much of getting the upgrade. It was a bit of a spaceship, and
when we pulled over for dinner, we had to hurriedly google how to take the key
out of the ignition. The upgrade also meant it was a larger car, which was fine
on the highway, but not so great in Bath where the streets were very small and
narrow.
We arrived in Bath just after 9pm
at night, to the cutest little Bed & Breakfast, The Bath House. It was very
cosy, which made getting out of bed in the morning in the rain really hard.
It was still raining when we took a
walk around Bath, which is a small enough place that we could walk everywhere
from the BnB. We started off by going up to the Royal Crescent, then into the
centre of Bath to see the Abbey and Pulteney Bridge.
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| Pulteney Bridge |
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| Royal Crescent |
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| Bath Abbey |
The rain was making the weather
really cold so we decided to stop for morning tea at Sally Lunn’s historic
eating house to have a traditional bath bun and a warm drink. The bath bun was a mixture of cake and bun,
and deliciously toasted with melted cinnamon butter. It was very filling, but
once we got outside again to find the rain was heavier and the wind colder, we
didn’t get very far until we stopped for another warm drink and an Abbey Ale
for Hugh at the Coeur De Lion. We stayed at the Coeur De Lion pub for an about
an hour, warming up by the fire before going back to collect the car to start
our 4 hour drive to Cornwall where we stayed with Hugh’s dad and his new wife.
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| Sally Lunn Bun |
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