We arrived in Bath and I brought the others to the same hostel Lewis and I had so enjoyed the previous time we were there, Bath Backpackers. After dropping our bags off I took the others for a stroll around the city, up along the canal, up the main street and then through the Circus and Royal Crescent then we stopped to let them rest in a small park next to a spire to Queen Victoria. After a short rest period and series of photographs of Jo posing in a tree we got back underway and headed back towards to hostel through the big park before I introduced Jo and Macky to the glory of La Baguette and its amazing, cheap pastries.
We then headed back into the hostel and chilled out watching crappy movies for a couple of hours before heading to a nearby Wetherspoons. Wetherspoons is a cheap, decent chain of pubs and do stuff like £7.50 steak and beer combos which aren't bad value. After this the others, being knackered from the couple of hour stroll, went to bed while I, keen to go out and have some fun, went for a wander and encountered vast numbers of students all heading in the same direction.
While exploring I was informed that I was "going the wrong way" by a group of them and discovered they were all going to a big uni pub and, as I was Australian, I was now required to go with them, which was totally not my plan at all. We queued for about 45 minutes to get into the destination pub, "The Earl", only to get to the front of the queue and be given a ticket and told to wait in the next door pub until our number was called as it was that full already (9pm). Fortunately the pub next door was reasonably cheap, 2 large cocktails for £5. Unfortunately it only sold cocktails and was so crowded I quickly became separated from the group I went in with and so I spent an hour or so making various new friends before heading out again to see if there was somewhere else to see.
From there I soon found a place called "The Huntsman" where a decent live band was playing for a cheeky last beer before calling it a night around 1.
The next morning Macky discovered that he had lost his phone and after a fruitless search we went and grabbed more pasty goodness from La Baguette before another attempt was made at finding Macky a new jacket. This time, after a couple of hours of comparing shops, we finally found him a satisfactory one and his happiness was fully restored. After that I sent the others to check out the baths while I went back to the hostel and sorted the majority of the rest of our UK tours hostels, flights and trains, made only slightly difficult by having to wait for Macky to agree on the hostels, which meant that he looked at the ones I had picked as the best at each location, then had to go through all the options himself in very precise detail only to find he agreed with every single decision I had made.
That evening we again hit up Wetherspoons as it was Tuesday cheap steak night, which really meant there was no other options available to us. We also made inquiries about Macky's phone but to no avail. After cheap steaks we grabbed some beers from the nearby Sainsbury's then went back to the hostel where we befriended an American girl called Lyndsey and spent the night drinking and playing Jenga and Shithead.
On awakening we found a guy from the hostel had found Macky's phone, which was a relief, and after yet more pastry deliciousness we jumped on a bus to Stone Henge which was pretty much as advertised. A hengeful of stones of reasonable size and impressiveness, a bunch of barrows and an interesting audio guide.
After that I took the others to the Beau Nash for dinner as a change from our La Baguette and Wetherspoons cycle which was good then, after stocking up on a few more beers we headed back to the hostel for pre drinks with Lyndsey and an aussie, Lachlan, before we crossed the road and I took them to my previously discovered favourite club in the UK, Discord, which is essentially English Blink.
On entry we learnt, by the vast see of bandanas, eye patches and cutlasses, that it was a pirate themed night, so Jo promptly stole a pirates hat, we had a few cheap shots and it was straight to the dance floor to finally get our metal club fix dealt with.
Ended up making another group of English friends, Beccie and her friends, after being slightly assaulted by a very young and... voluptuous... pirate girl who I finally gave the slip to.
Stayed there until close then walked back to the hostel where I found Jo and Lyndsey people watching from the common room window before I went to bed.
After another bad nights sleep, courtesy of the chavs in our room who would loudly get in every night around 2am then loudly snore before loudly waking up, talking and taking turns showering and changing from about 6-8am every morning (yeah, they were a little loud) while the entire rest of the room glared at them, we checked out, dropped off our bags and watched a Knight's Tale in semi-comatose states before jumping on another train for the 20 minute trip west to Bristol.
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