It crept from the elbow of a plane tree in Sydney Gardens, its tiny head silhouetted against the spring sky. It could have been a wren, or a sparrow, or a treecreeper. But then it did something no other British bird can do: moving purposefully down the trunk, it tapped the mottled bark to flush out insects. It was definitely a nuthatch.
Bath's magnificent plane trees are a winter wonder of the city; leafless, they are even more statuesque than in summer. Over two hundred years old, they frame the honey-coloured Regency terraces: six are grouped companionably in the middle of The Circus, near the Royal Crescent, while an impressive loner in Abbey Green is lit up for the city's Christmas market.
Walking around Bath is both a workout — all those hills — and a pleasure, because it is a mosaic of parks and green spaces. You can often head up an alleyway or drop down to a path along the River Avon or the Kennet and Avon canal, and avoid roads altogether. One such traffic-free route through Bathwick Fields leads up to a bench with a panoramic view of the Abbey and city below. As we sat there in the gloaming, watching the lights come on, the clouds around the silver bauble of Venus turned pink and we heard tawny owls calling from the shrubberies of the neighbourhood's splendid houses. These include the beautiful 1825 Italianate villa — named Fiesole by sometime resident, poet and writer Walter Savage Landor — which since 1953 has been YHA Bath.
In 2017-18 the main building, with its friezes and decorative tiles, was restored, and in 2019 the wooden buildings in the garden were demolished to make room for an energy-efficient new annexe. This is where we stayed, in an en-suite family/group room with another great view.
As well as the obvious visits, to the Roman Baths and the Abbey, there is so much else to do in Bath, listed by UNESCO as both a World Heritage Site and one of the Great Spa Towns of Europe. A highlight of this trip was the exhibition of Renaissance maps at The American Museum, just up Bathwick Hill from the hostel (on until 22 June 2025). The focus of their permanent collection is folk art, including beautiful patchwork quilts, each with a story to tell. In the garden, there's a brightly-painted Conestoga wagon, "the HGV of its day".
The Holburne Museum in Sydney Gardens is a peaceful 20 minute walk from the hostel, through fields and along the canal. It too hosts interesting special exhibitions while its main galleries contain intriguing miniature portraits and unintentionally hilarious 18th century stumpwork embroidery. The cafe, in a striking modern extension, is bordered in spring by a bed of hellebores.
At Bath Assembly Rooms we sat in deck chairs, doing something that's impossible in real life: staring at the surface of the sun, with its sunspots and solar flares. It was a giant illuminated sculpture called Helios, by Luke Jerram, with a soundtrack by Dan Jones.
We followed part of the Skyline Walk, starting from Sham Castle, a photogenic folly built by entrepreneur and philanthropist Ralph Allen in 1762, and ending up at the cafe in Bath University's Sports Training Village on Claverton Down, afterwards watching a tennis tournament.
We liked Topping and Company's bookshop in the old Quaker meeting house, its shelves stretching to the high ceilings; the redeveloped Green Park Station, with its markets and shops; and, on the way back from there to Bathwick Fields, the quayside buildings and Bath Deep Lock, a miniature vertical garden with ferny vegetation in each of its dripping nooks.
Bath has excellent kids' playgrounds. The newish one in Sydney Gardens has wooden climbing frames, undulating terrain, scented herbs and waving grasses. The big one in Royal Victoria Gardens contains an impressive array of play equipment: parallel zip wires for racing and a variety of swings for children with different needs, including wheelchair users. A local parent recommended Henrietta Park for children who are learning to scoot or cycle.
Jane Austen lived in Bath for five years. She loved Sydney Gardens for its (now vanished) labyrinth, and her books Persuasion and Northanger Abbey are set in the city. This year special events will celebrate the 250th anniversary of her birth, in 1775.
Half an hour away by car is Laycock Abbey, former home of photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. Today's visitors take photos of every corner and detail, something that would never have been possible had it not been for people like him, who were determined to find a way to record fleeting moments for posterity. He was motivated, so the story goes, by not being very good at drawing, regretting that he hadn't been able to record the views on his honeymoon trip to Europe.
His dogged experimenting led to a key development in early photography: the invention of the photographic negative. At Laycock a museum puts his achievements in the context of work by other photographic pioneers, and features a digitised version of the first commercially-published book ever to be illustrated with photos: The Pencil of Nature (1844). It includes Fox Talbot's pictures of the cloisters at Laycock, as well as a strangely-moving still life of drinking glasses and decanters, which in 2020 inspired the work in Through a Glass Darkly by avant garde artist Cornelia Parker.
I couldn't take a photo of the nuthatch. It was too far away and in shadow, and I was just too slow. But I'll remember it as a sign of spring unfolding in one of Britain's most beautiful cities.
Getting to YHA Bath by public transport
There's a bus stop right outside the hostel. Take the U1 or (in term time) U2 bus from Bath Spa railway station.
Read more of Jenny’s YHA family adventures.
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