Day 6 • Sept. 4

It took some quick work, but we got up and dressed in five minutes and made it downstairs to breakfast for last call at 8:30 a.m.  The dining room was elegant, and breakfast featured real orange juice.  Back in our room, we put the finishing touches on our faucet-cleaned laundry and showered.

We checked out of what would prove to be the most charming of all the places we stayed on the vacation (and the most expensive).  We loaded up the car with gas and headed back toward Bath, stopping at a nearby park ‘n’ drive on the recommendation of the same bartender who suggested our hotel accommodations.  The park ‘n’ drive proved to be a boon—no hassle with Bath traffic and expensive parking.

Once in Bath, I bought a map and off we went in search of the famed Roman baths.  Our search was not exactly the shortest distance between two points.  But as it turned out, all the better.  We wandered through Victoria Park, a well manicured patch of green; came upon a royal crescent, a semi-circular construction of what appeared to be one of the world’s most dignified stretches of row houses; and lest we forget, an old house that boasted of having once been the residence of the friend and secretary of the composer George Frederick Handel.

The time had come to consult the map.  Where the hell were those baths?  Not just yet.  The next stop was Bath Abbey.  In our travels we’ve seen a few old churches, and Bath Abbey in my opinion (and Sharon’s) was the second most impressive one we’ve seen.  (Number one being The Vatican, of course.)  From its ornately carved, massive wooden doors to its immense pipe organ to its sleek flying buttressed roof, the abbey is a wondrous structure.

And last but not least—the baths.  We romped around this 2000-year-old Roman ruin and its quite recent vintage museum for well over an hour.  We probably would have stayed longer had our itinerary not demanded we soon hit the road.  But our stomachs came before the road.  So we sought and found a suitable pub, where we dined on our second choice of fare—chicken Kiev.  They were all out of our first choice—beef kidney pie.  Of course, we required a couple pints of lager to wash down our lunch.

It was now about 3:00 p.m., and our tour of Bath was over if not complete.  We took the park ‘n’ ride bus back to our car and got under way for a 4:00 a.m. rendezvous with a ferry in Holyhead, Wales.  The going was slow at first.  The road signs to the Motorway were sparse and led us on a zigzagging course through Bath.  Once outside of town, the going got even slower.  Much slower.  Road-construction, watch-the-workers-not-work slow.  This was the worst traffic pile up of the entire trip.  And I had to take a leak worthy of Secretariat, himself.

Well, no one ever stayed in a traffic jam forever.  We eventually found ourselves on the Motorway doing 80+ miles per hour.  Once makes very good time doing 80+ mph, even with the frequent stops made for fuel, food, and water closet visits.

As night fell, we left the main roadway to venture into Queensferry in quest of dinner.  Queensferry wasn’t happening, so we drove toward Chester.  We stopped along the way at one inviting looking pub, but they weren’t serving food at that hour, so we drank a couple of pints and continued toward Chester.  Once there, we parked and tried out another pub; they weren’t serving food either.  We probably would have further explored Chester for a place to eat, but I detected that our right front tire was going flat.  We drove to a gas station, where my diagnosis was determined to be unfounded.  Flat tire or not, that was the last of Chester.

We found our way back to the Motorway, M55/A55, which ran along the northern coast of Wales.  Efforts to find a suitable establishment in which to dine were fruitless.  The drive along this near empty and newly built section of the Motorway , however, was impressive—highlighted by the lights of Liverpool off in the distance.

About 10:15 p.m. we pulled into a Welsh pub.  They weren’t serving food either, but beer they had and beer we drank.  We also chatted a good bit with a few of the local patrons—a short unkempt truck driver, a Britannica salesman with a disabled car, and a Welshman who did god knows what but was a delight to talk to.  Finally, we bought some beer to go and left.

Onward to Holyhead.  The roadway at this stage was still under construction and as such had a schizophrenic character to it.  We passed by Conwy Castle and soon thereafter Anglesey Isle, at which point the road became a simple two-laner.  Sharon fell asleep; I drove on.  At last we came to the ferry terminal at Holyhead.  A parking attendant directed us where to park, which looked more like a queuing point for cars destined to board the ferry than a parking lot.  We entered the Sealink Lines reservation/lounge building, had some coffee (I also had a lousy cheeseburger), and looked over the ferry schedules.  I decided to go with the B&I Lines cruise because they had a ferry returning at a more palatable time than did Sealink.

We bought our ferry tickets and were told that we should park our car at the rail station because it wasn’t safe to leave a car near the ferry yard.  We had a hard time understanding how it could possibly have been unsafe to leave our car in the well-patrolled, heavily-used lot it was parked in.  Our suspicions were well founded—we had, after all, parked in the zone for cars waiting to board the ferry.  Fortunately, we were at the front of the row and could easily exit the yard, which we did.

We parked at the railroad long-term parking lot, packed our bags, and took the shuttle bus to the ferry.  Our movements didn’t go as smoothly as stated, but even with the rain and the difficulty in locating track #2, we did what had to be done.

Very shortly after boarding the ferry, we fell fast asleep.

Notes:

• The English Motorway has come quite far since 1983.  They’re as well built as any road on which I’ve ever driven.

• Bath was a blast.