bath : off-season travel

But I hate to hear you talking... as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days. 

Jane Austen, Persuasian

The coach Ella and I catch to Bath has nine people on it. We take the rear emergency exit seats and stretch out. We've just moved into our new place. I have £50 to my name, and a headache I've forgotten to acknowledge for months. As the city gives way to the country I feel like I'm breathing again. London, the great messy crush of people and architecture, will go on without us. It won't notice we're gone. The sluggish weight of big cities builds slowly on me. I don't realise it's there until I'm released from it by some open air and a few good cows.

Bath is wet (as the name suggests, ha). Thin English rain veils the neat rows of terraced Georgian houses that run up and down the hills. It's the kind of rain you can walk about in and only end up a little bit damp when you reach your destination. Ours is Roscoff Deli, a little place in the centre of town with winding staircases, mismatched chairs, and gluten free sandwiches. They're generous with their cheeses. We sit in the café and watch the rain on the window, through the lunch rush and into the afternoon. Then we make our way through streets with sweet names like Quiet Street and Cheap Street and Parsonage Lane to our hotel. It just feels like a World Heritage Site. It feels like I should have a bonnet.

The realisation that my backpack is out of place comes over me slowly like the rain. I carried this thing over the European continent for months in the summer, one of many. In the grey Bath winter, I don't see another pack. It's the off-season. The whole city has a local, daily life feel. 

It's sad that I have to call it a city. City means smog and rush and that feeling of being completely alone in a crowd of people. Bath has none of that. Even in the centre, where Waitrose and Boots chain stores occupy the hollowed-out insides of magnificent Georgian buildings, there is that feeling of community that seems native to the country. I'm not sure why geography and population density dictate whether it's socially acceptable to smile at strangers. I am sure you can do it in Bath.

I booked this trip as a Christmas present for Ella. She's a bit of a Jane Austen nerd, and Bath has the museum and the pretty history. I didn't think of the place itself as somewhere to go, really. More fool me. The museum was cute, and I will never, ever grow out of dressing up as a boy (though my chubby thirteen year-old Jack Sparrow was probably the highlight of my cross-gender career). We wrote with quills and gazed on pictures labelled with particularly hesitant engravings. But the Jane Austen museum isn't the reason I'd go back.

The Roman Baths sink into the earth in the centre of town. The water that rises into them seems too blue-green, slightly alien. Its brightness against the masses of pale stone is beautiful. I take my time walking around the perimeter of the Great Bath. The water moves gently and steam rises off the surface like a hot breath. It's quiet. There are maybe six or seven other people here. Through large stone doorways are other cavernous old bathing rooms, dark and silent and warm from the springs. The smell of hot minerals seems to have penetrated the rock. 

The audio guide is probably the simplest and best I've encountered since leaving home. Also, it's free, and has some fun extra commentaries from Bill Bryson. The people behind the fiasco of the audio guides at the Louvre should come here and get schooled. 

It's at the baths that I realise I've struck something. The place is pretty much empty. Compared to the crush at the Vatican and the lines for the Archaeological Museum in Athens, it feels positively deserted. A cheeky Google reveals that the Bath baths receive over one million visitors a year. Averaged, that's nearly three thousand for every day it's open. But in the three hours we were there I'd say we were accompanied by only a hundred others. Maths has never been my forte, but I figure that leaves a lot of spare heads to clock in during the summer and school break. It is also worth mentioning that, although cold, the day was clear blue and still. Not at all unpleasant.

Basically, I've just been sold on the perks of off-season travel. If you're heading to the beach, weather is key. If you're up for a Vegas holiday you intend not to remember, it'd be a shame to find everything deserted. But the epiphany of visiting museums that are quiet, and seeing something ancient and beautiful without the top of someone's head and a few elbows obscuring your vision? Worth the extra scarf. And Gravel Walk (read Persuasion) was ours alone. 

There is scaffolding (as per usual for me) across the façade of the empty Georgian Pump Room. We stick our noses inside the famous meeting place and discuss briefly what it might have been like to dance and play at cards with Mr Darcy and dear Bingley beneath the high ceilings. Okay, so I have my Austen nerd moments too. 

Bath also boasts some great religious architecture, stalls and stores and antiques, and Pulteney Bridge, one of only four in the world to have shops the full length on each side. The city is littered with sweet cafés with options of the gluten free vegetarian variety (like Bill's, which I've discovered is a chain but still love). It's as though some sympathetic hand scattered them there just for me. Our last day sees my last £8 (for real: totally empty bank account) spent on falafel sandwiches and banana bread at Green Rocket. Didn't even regret it.

I don't know whether it's just in contrast to the overwhelming feeling of lostness I get in London's huge sprawl, but after two days, Bath felt like somewhere I could get to know. I will go back.