Narrow Boating.

Last weekend, we went on a narrow boat with our cousins. The narrow boat was 69 feet long.  It was an eight berth. The first day we got there at 3:30 p.m.ish and did all the boring stuff like signing the papers. Then, at about 5:00, my cousins came from school, and off we went!

Adam, in Sam's and my room.

The route we took had a tunnel that was fairly long.  When we first came to the tunnel there was a boat coming out from the other direction, the man driving the boat told us to watch out for bats. We didn’t believe there were bats in there, but we did look up a lot, just to make sure there were not. That was a bad plan because the tunnel was wet and some of us got water drops on our faces. When one boat went by we started singing Tunak Tunak Tun... an Indian pop song. It was really funny. ( follow the link)

When the person driving the boat (Nick) called up it sounded like when someone calls out at Pan Am during a swim meet, you could only just make out what he was saying, or not at all.

A funny pic of the dog on the boat that went through some locks with us.

Us kids were constantly running around or walking along the roof.  Sam and Adam were always going from one end of the boat to the other on the lip of the boat. My dad thought I was going to be badly hurt, (me, being the one prone to falling and tripping) in fact, he was certain I would, but nobody fell in and no one was badly hurt.  I was the closest in both things, my foot slipped in the canal, just a bit, I squished my thumb in a door, and when opening a lock, the safety latch was not on so when I took the lock key out, it spun back down.  If you let go of the lock key when opening or closing the locks, it spins down and the lock key can fly off and injure you (the lock key is a big chunk of metal called a windlass).

My bruised thumb 4 days later

The weekend was very fun and I think I laughed more in that weekend than I would in two weeks!

The gang of lock workers.

Bath Project

On Tuesday we went to see the Roman baths in Bath with my Uncle Peter and Aunt Angie. In Roman times the baths were a social part of life. Rich men would work in the morning and go to the baths in the evenings. I don’t have when the women went on the top of my head but, I think they went in the afternoon as well. I don’t know when the poorer men went, maybe they went in the afternoon, it seems to be the fashion.

These particular baths were a very sacred place because the water for the baths came from a spring. The Romans had no explanation for the spring water other than that it was a gift from the Gods.
There was a temple for Minerva, the Goddess of wisdom and healing, in the bath grounds. The Romans believed that Minerva had provided the spring for them for healing. Thousands of pilgrims came from afar and slept overnight in a certain room where the steam from the spring was circulated. They would tell the priest their dreams and the priest would interpret them and tell or give them the treatment they needed.

The reason that the baths were so well preserved is because after the Romans left the baths, the roof fell in. The next people to settle there didn’t ruin the actual baths. 

Later inhabitants didn’t know that the baths were underneath. They were only found a hundred years or so ago, when the houses on top were slowly and mysteriously filling with warm water. When the British did start to unveil the baths, it only took them three years. They then built the museum around them and replaced the pieces of wall that had been on the ground to where they should have been. 

These rings on the photo are not towel racks, they were used when the water flowed and was kept higher. The water filled to the height of the rings. This bath was called a kings bath. If you didn’t hold on to the rings, you would have been swept away with the rising water! Just above the rings we the stone turns a paler color is where the Victorians built up. One of the staff said that she had led a tour for a person older than the statues, which are now only 117 years old.

The Romans built the Baths and temple in between 65 and 75 AD. They rammed oak logs into the mud to direct the water into a stone reservoir which then fed into the baths. The reservoir was a holy place in the temple courtyard that no one swam in.

Fun Facts

This hot spring is the only one in Britain.

The Celts said this spring was a gift from their god of the springs Sulis. When the Romans came they thought she sounded like their Goddess, Minerva so they combined the two and worshipped Sulis Minerva.

The excavators found a hundred curses written on sheets of pewter and lead. These curses were sometimes rolled before they were thrown into the spring.

Lake District

I would like to inform you all that even though I didn’t go near Italy; yesterday I did see the ruins of a Roman bathhouse in the Lake District, in England. There wasn’t much left, though some parts were surprisingly well preserved.  I thought there would be signs telling you to stay off the ruins, but all there was was a sign saying not to climb on them because you could get badly hurt. Sadly, Sam did not get to see the ruins because he went off on a hike with my parents, while I spent the day seeing things with my grandparents.  We went to a very small town called Ravenglass, which used to be an important Roman port. It was near the farm where we are staying. The baths were outside the Glannavantra fort located on the cliffs outside the town.  I found the fact that the baths were out of the fort quite interesting because there were, no other buildings outside the fort. The bathhouse ruins were a half-mile walk from the town.

Today, we went to the Sunkenkirk Stone Circle from the Neolithic period, which my dad tells me, is Stone Age type time. The stone circle was in a field of cows, bulls and tourists. It is also known as Swinside Stone Circle.

We are communicating.

Later, we went to Ulverston and walked around aimlessly.
For dinner, we had pasta salad and leftovers. We all agree that the small trailer we are staying in needs a bigger pot but, I must say that 6 people, 4 of them adults, are a large group, not the usual number of people for a place of this size. For dessert, we had blackberry crumble with custard and Cadbury roses. The roses we picked up at Cadbury world, which I recommend you visit if you are in England. The blackberries we picked at the park in Broughton-in-Furness.

P.S. Cadbury World is in Birmingham, look it up on the Internet. J!!J!!J!!J!!J!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.P.S.I must tell you that we were just having supper and my dad asked me to get him the hot sauce he had bought. The sauce had a flip lid but he twisted the big cap and when he started shaking it so it would drip out faster but instead it poured out onto his potato a lot. He called them patatas bravas and ate them any way.  Bye.

P.P.S. don’t Mind my bad spelling.
P.P.P.S. I will have some pictures of the ruins but they are on my grandparent's camera and I will have to wait a few day's before postable.