During the weekend of 8/9 September, we drove our son to Bath, a beautiful old town near the Welsh border, where he will be studying the next 4-5 years. All this week’s pictures are from that trip.
Main
As always when I take a ferry trip, I go outside to look around. Here is the pier in Calais harbour, apparently a popular fishing spot:
The alternates:
Alternate 1
An hour or so later, the famous white cliffs of Dover were visible in the (unfortunately dirty) window:
Alternate 2
As I said, Bath is a beautiful town. This view is 5 minutes walk from my son’s dormitory room:
Alternate 3
Narrow boats, used to navigate narrow English canals:
Alternate 4
But we had come to Bath to install our son in the dorms, not to do sightseeing. So here he is, having set up the most important possession–his computer–and having made sure that the in-room internet connection is working properly:
Alternate 5
That done, we went for a walk around Bath on Saturday evening, looking for a particular watering hole, The Green Pub, where I had enjoyed some excellent pints during a visit the year before. On the way, we just looked around and enjoyed the place:
Alternate 6
As the evening wore on, we came across a typical British Saturday night phenomenon, crowds of young people in the town centre, doing silly things or just being drunk:
Alternate 7
Finally, we found the Green Pub (located, funny enough, on Green Street) and enjoyed their excellent offerings:
Alternate 8
Sunday it was serious; we left our son to start his new life as a university student and headed east towards London and Dover. We drove on country roads the first few miles, and came across on this archetypical English landscape. The right of people to hike in the countryside is as deeply enshrined in the English psyche as the right to bear arms is in the American one.
Alternate 9
We got to Dover a bit earlier than needed, so we decided to drive up the hills surrounding the town to see if we could find a good vantage point for a view of the town and the sea. Instead, we stumbled upon a top-secret weapon being tested by the British military:
