Bath
Britain's only hot spring, in a town built from a single kind of stone
- When to go
- October 12° · 17 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€€price 4 of 5
- How many days
- 1–2days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 25 km Bristol · 68 km Cardiff
- Right now
Bath exists because of a hole in the ground that pushes out about one million one hundred and seventy thousand litres of 46-degree water a day — Britain's only hot spring. The Romans built a bath house over it, the Georgians built a town, and UNESCO has listed it twice: in 1987 and again in 2021.
In the Roman complex you only look at the water. It carries the Naegleria fowleri amoeba, which killed a girl in 1978 after she swam in a town pool fed by the same spring, so the hot water is entered at Thermae Bath Spa, a modern spa two streets away. That makes them two separate slots in the day: the Baths as a museum, the spa as a swim, with different tickets and different rules — the spa admits no one under sixteen.
The town above the baths is a single eighteenth-century design decision, raised in the same Bath limestone, so it holds one colour from the river to the hill. The Royal Crescent is looked at from outside and costs nothing; the only way in is Number One, dressed as a Georgian home and open Tuesday to Sunday — it's closed on Mondays except in the school holidays.
Trains from Paddington run every half hour and take about an hour and twenty, so Bath works as a day trip from London too. But a second day here goes on the surroundings, not the town: Stonehenge is 43 km south-east in a straight line, and Castle Combe, one of the villages of the southern Cotswolds, is a train to Chippenham and then a bus.
Guides for Bath
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Bath in 1 day
→Two slots hold the day: the baths when they open, the spa before the pools close.
Day trips from Bath
→Bristol by train, Castle Combe and Wells by bus, Stonehenge and Avebury by car or on a tour — and which of them fit…
Bath uphill: gardens, Uranus and the path around the city
→A garden with a Palladian bridge, the house from which Uranus was found, and a ten-kilometre path around the city — all…
What to see in Bath
The Roman Baths
The complex around the spring, and the one thing in town that needs two hours. An adult ticket booked ahead for a weekday is €31; weekends and walk-up tickets on the day cost more, and the tariff also moves by month. The ticket carries an entry slot, so the day is planned around it.
The Royal Crescent and the Circus
Thirty houses in a 150-metre arc with a hundred and fourteen Ionic columns, built by John Wood the Younger between 1767 and 1774, and the circular Circus designed by his father. Number One is €19, with last entry an hour before closing.
Thermae Bath Spa
A two-hour session is €51 on a weekday and €57 at the weekend, with the open-air rooftop pool, the Minerva Bath and the steam rooms; towel and robe are included.
Bath Abbey
A late-Gothic church with fan vaulting, €10 for adults. It's open 10 to 5.30 on weekdays, to 6 on Saturdays, and on Sundays only from 1 to 3.30, so don't plan it for a Sunday morning. The tower tour is a separate €21 ticket and includes entry to the church.
Pulteney Bridge
A 1774 bridge, one of four in the world lined with shops along its full length on both sides, with the Ponte Vecchio, the Rialto and Erfurt's Krämerbrücke. You can't tell from on it — it looks like an ordinary shopping street — so you look at it from the bank, together with the horseshoe weir on the Avon below.
Castle Combe
A village on the southern edge of the Cotswolds that you can reach from Bath without a car. The train to Chippenham takes eleven minutes, then the 95 or 95A bus about twenty more. Monday to Saturday there are four buses a day, on Sundays only from April to August, so the day is planned back from the last one home.
Stories from Bath
How it actually was when we were there, and what was worth it.
Bath and the Cotswolds with no car: trains, buses and villages
→The villages connect to the towns on the edge of the region, not to each other. So the plan is built backwards, from the last bus towards the list of things to see.
Two things you probably did not know
The thermal water at Bath fell as rain thousands of years ago, sank two kilometres down and was heated by the earth before returning to the surface. Over a million litres a day come out of the spring at 46 degrees.
Jane Austen lived in Bath for five years and set two novels there, though she disliked the place. She wrote of the relief of leaving it, and Bath now gives her a museum and an annual festival.
Ready for Bath?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Bath — day trips or weekends.
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Within reach from here: Stonehenge, The Cotswolds and Oxford
See how much of that actually suits you — or pin Bath if you have been.
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