A Day Out in My World

On a day of tempestuous weather my  friend Rafe and I set off for a visit to the theatre, facing  a six hour roundtrip of 222 miles in the pouring rain,  between Valley's End in Shropshire and Bath in Somerset. When I told my friend Deborah during a skype chat, she gasped. "That's hardcore", she said.   Theatre Royal Bath was doing 'The Tempest', Shakespeare's late, great drama, with Tim Pigott-Smith as Prospero, a production I didn't want to miss. 

The route crosses the Severn Estuary which forms the boundary between Wales and England in this stretch. We're on the way home in the early evening here; by this time the rain had stopped and I could take a shot through the windscreen.

Second Severn Crossing - inaugurated in 1996

Ail Groesfan Hafren (Welsh name)

The Theatre Royal, Bath

The wonky main entrance to the theatre was once part of the house belonging to Beau Nash, the celebrated 18th C dandy and leader of fashion, and master of ceremonies at the spa town. We had lunch in the handsome building on the right, according to a plaque on the wall the former residence of Beau Nash and now an Italian restaurant.

The plaque reads "This was the splendid home of Beau Nash, the 'King of Bath' and his handsome and faithful mistress, Juliana Popjoy. They spent the whole of the latter part of their lives here, until the Beau's death in 1761 at the age of 86. We preserve this building at the high standards Beau Nash set for Bath. We think that Juliana Popjoy approves. Indeed, she is occasionally seen here, dressed in grey, and we suspect she has an eye on whether we are entertaining our guests as well as she entertained the Beau's friends in the same rooms 250 years ago."

We both loved the production. A very elderly couple in front of us was occasionally shushed by their daughter, who must have been treating them to an unfamiliar outing - the woman's hearing aid whistled like a phone going off ("turn it off, Mum!")  and the pair scraped their ice cream tubs rather enthusiastically after the interval, then asking loudly what they should do with the empty containers - but matinees are like that sometimes; the action in the audience can occasionally be as distracting as the action on the stage.

We're only half a mile away from Pennsylvania here. Pennsylvania, the small village in South Gloucestershire, between the historic cities of Bath and Bristol, that is. The village was named after the US state by Quakers, and Wikipedia says it has a petrol station and at least one bed and breakfast. So all of you who will, no doubt, flock here now that I've mentioned it, had better book your room well in advance! The countryside off the A46 is very pretty indeed, even if Pennsylvania itself is nothing to write home about.

Another shot through the windscreen of the Severn bridge on the way home, driving at motorway speed.

Although this outing took us a long way from Valley's End, a theatre visit is very much part of my world, which means that I am offering this contribution to Our World Tuesday  with a clear conscience.