Bath, England

Thursday June 24, 2010

Arrived in England at 8 PM.  We were required to fill out a card indicating the address of the place we were staying in England.  Luckily I had written the information down in my journal.

Bath YMCA
International House
Broad Street Place
Bath
P. +44 1225 325900
The plus in the above phone number means the international number which is usually 00 (for Europe) or 01.

The next stop was to get a rental car.  Laurie luckily wanted to get the full coverage/no fault insurance on the car.  I vaguely remember Laurie asking me if a stick shift would be OK and I agreed since I had driven a stick for many years although I had not driven one for the past few years.  Never, never, never! get a stick shift in England.  There are already too many driving considerations that you need to adapt to and the stick shift just adds to these problems.
1.  You drive on the left side of the road, not the right.
2. The stick uses the left hand rather than the right.
3. Roundabouts or circles are used at nearly every intersection (and you turn the other way)
4. Many of the roads are very narrow & curvy
5. The city of Bath is laid out in a complex maze not a rectangular array and there are many one way streets.
6. We had been up for some 24+ hours by the time we got to England.
OK, got the rental car - first off there was no key, just a door lock/unlock sensor & a start button.  So I got the car started but noticed a (!) light on the dash.  I thought it was the emergency brake engaged light because the car felt a little grabby, but I tried to disengage it and the light stayed on.  It turns out it was the emergency brake on light.  Due to lack of sleep and disorientation I just left it on.  So I ended up driving to Bath with the emergency brake partially engaged the whole time.  I didn't smell anything getting hot so hopefully it didn't cause any problems.

My first major difficulty was in misjudging the left side of the car (passenger side).  I hit one curb on the left before I got out of the terminal area.  Merged onto the M4 without problem and other than being a bit drowsy and some construction the M4 to Bath was not a problem.

Took the Bath exit, made a wrong turn from one of the many roundabouts and ended up in a different city.  Many of the two way streets are not actually wide enough for two cars, especially if there is a car parked.  They park cars both facing the direction of traffic and against the direction of traffic which is very disconcerting while driving and trying to remember that you are supposed to be on the left side of the street.

Hit my second curb in the town going through a narrow street.  Finally got to Bath around 11:30 PM after driving around a little to find the YMCA where we had our reservations we finally saw a sign.  The street looked like an alley with piles of trash next to it.  We later discovered this was not the main entrance.  There was a small sign indicating to go down the street and up a narrow staircase to get to the YMCA.

These are the steps you go up to get to the Bath YMCA if you park down below.  All access to the YMCA entrance is through narrow alleys like this.

I had parked on the street.  I later found out that to park on the street you need to deposit coins in a parking box to obtain a pass and come back and put it on your car.  I also encountered another confusing thing here.  When I tried to lock the car doors and check them they always were unlocked.  I later discovered that the key sent an electronic signal that automatically unlocked or locked the car.

After going up the stairs we checked into the YMCA which turned out to be quite nice.  I would recommend staying there.

This fountain was in the courtyard just outside of the Bath YMCA

Unfortunately I had left the car in a no parking zone so the attendant explained how to get to the "car park."  He gave us a small map bit it did not have any detail to it.  You could buy maps for 1 pound but you needed a coin and when I picked up my foreign currency the did not have any coins.

So we all went back to the car and ended up driving around Bath's narrow streets from about 11:30 to 2 AM!  It only takes about 30 minutes to walk across downtown Bath.  By car it is a maze of twisting, narrow, one way streets.

Bath is also sort of a party town with swarms of drunken college aged students roaming the streets reveling.  I kept thinking that if I drove around a few times I would get a feel of the city but due to weariness, and the dark I ended up getting on the same loop over and over again.  I finally, after a couple of hours, found a parking area (for motorcades only) but luckily there was a detailed map.  There I could see that it was about 10 minutes from the car park by foot.  I tried to convince Laurie to stay with the car and let me walk to the car park to see where it was but she did not want to stay behind and I did not want to leave the car at this location since it would not be legally parked.

After studying the map I attempted to get to the car park.  After two loops I ended up back at the motorcade park.  Studied the map again and after one more loop I made it into the parking lot nearly 3 hours later.

I also found out later that many of the traffic signs were unfamiliar to me.  For example yellow spheres on pole apparently mean you must stop and yield if pedestrians are present.  Yellow posts seem to indicate something similar.  I guess that explains why the pedestrians kept jumping out in front of my car!

We were able to walk back to the YMCA, avoiding the rowdy groups of college kids, now mostly reduced to a few small stumbling students or the occasional vomiter.

The hotel room had a bunk bed and a regular bed with showers and bath rooms located down the hall.  We were on the 3rd floor.  Ground floor is called "0" in England.  So that was our first day in England.