Four Bridges and an Author - 13 December 2008

Leaving London to be buffeted by heavy rain, we drove to Bath, and enjoyed the pedestrianised streets, shops, Christmas lights and the architecture that make this a World Heritage site.

Bath is beautiful at any time, but Christmas shop window displays and lights enhance any town. One feature of Bath is the Pulteney Bridge, one of only four bridges in the world with shops on both sides, albeit extremely narrow shops. Due to the heavy rain in the night, the river was very swollen and brown, not the normal picturesque river we have seen before.

Although many websites mention that the Pulteney Bridge is one of four it is extremely difficult to find the names of the four bridges. We had walked over another two of them, the Ponte Vecchio and the Rialto so that was three of four but finding the fourth was a challenge. For anyone else doing a web search the definitive list is: Pulteney Bridge, Bath (UK); Ponte Vecchio, Florence (Italy); Rialto, Venice (Italy); and Krämerbrücke, Erfurt (Germany).

We did a Jane Austen walk that we had printed off the BBC site that took us to places she visited and where Jane lived in Bath. En route we passed the cathedral, which Jane would have attended, and were invited in for an excellent Christmas Carol service.