exerpts from a travel journal 1: bed, bath and beyond;

[I woke up to news of the bush fires in Victoria: the "worst in history". Scary stuff, particularly as the affected area is where my friends live. If you can, please donate to Australian Red Cross.

Thank you.]

3rd February 2009: Bath, Somerset
I took a notebook away with me this time, a gorgeous hardback decorated with a vintage print of the Empire State Building that I bought in a crime bookshop my last day in New York, because sitting on trains always seems to lead to such wordiness and perhaps it’s just as well that I start keeping a “proper” travel journal on wherever I end up this year. The thing is, I just wasn’t in the mood to write on the way down to Gillingham but I realised that, sometimes, that’s alright too.

Lola and I actually managed to cram an incredible amount into our time here; along with sleeping late, eating lots of lovely food and generally chilling out. I’m quite proud of us.

Before we got to Bath, we first had to navigate THE GRATE LONDON BLIZZRD OF 2009. I’m sure you know the one: it was all over the news in the bits of the world that aren’t London, I hear. Was surprised to discover ust how difficult it is to clear train tracks of snow: you can’t grit, because it derails the trains, and the de-icer spray they use gets washed away or covered up by snowfall. The wet and slippery conditions also interfere with braking distances. Still can’t help but think a couple dozen Routemasters running even behind schedule wouldn’t half clear the drifts though: personally, I blame the bendy buses.

Paddington Station sells kilted Bears.

Staying at the Travelodge on George Street, perfectly positioned between a Wagamama and a Revolution. Continued intentions not to dine in chains we can use at home have so far come to naught, apart from the freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice and pancakes and bacon that were this morning’s breakfast at Central Bar.

Our room is spartan but large, and freezing cold. It took me two das to figure out that by removing the back cushions from the sofa, I could double he size of my bed. We seem to have been granted some sort of an upgrade today, as we have been given a small bar of soap and an adequate supply of sachets of coffee (although still not enough, given this room supposedly sleeps four). We don’t mind though, as we brought our own toiletries and the shop across the way sells Irn Bru. However, we do wish that we could open the windows and rain abuse down on the noisy students below, for whom 1am on a going-on Tuesday isn’t outwith the schedule. It seems anachronistic how yobbish this little town, so genteel and picturesque during the day, gets at night.

Today we made the daytrip we’d promised ourselves, to Stonehenge. Snowflakes swirled from skies solid with white mist as our minibus lurched through the country roads; skies that cleared suddenly and spookily as we approached the monument itself. Our driver was chatty, although his crap patter bordered on the disturbingly overfamiliar. “So which of you has the most luck with men?” he asked Lola and I, apropos of nothing. His awkwardness at my bezzer’s inevitable sarcastic outing was almost endearing.

The clearing sky was perhaps the most striking thing about our Stonehenge experience, but the snow began to come down all the heavier as we exited the minibus. The monument itself is roped off to the public, which you can of course appreciate, but it seemed to me that we paid £6.50 for an audio guide that couldn’t keep up with our shivering souls and the opportunity to get just close enough for some generic photos. If there was anything spiritual or mystical there, I couldn’t sense it for my chattering teeth.

Lacock Village was our other stopping point on the tour, and thankfully the snow stopped just long enough to allow us time to wander – even if the cold had already soaked into my bones. The village itself is owned by the National Trust, with its homes leased in the main to families with a connection to the area. You can trace the generations on the village’s war memorial. Once a prosperous trade route, Lacock suffered from the collapse of the wool industry so badly that its limited confines once held three poor houses (and now hold three pubs). We saw what was left of one, now converted into a pottery base and two doors down from the house Harry Potter’s parents were killed in in one of the movies.

Back to base, and after a tasty pizza dinner (in yet another chain) to the Little Theatre Cinema, where we saw (and thoroughly enjoyed, particularly as I’d just finished reading All The President’s Men) Frost/Nixon.