If You Only Had a Day: The Essential Story of Bath In One Amazing Walk: The most stimulating 15,000+ steps you'll do this year!

This book guides you on a pleasant, 8.5-mile route in and around the city of Bath in Somerset, England, the only UK city to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its entirety for its history, its architecture and its natural setting in the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Bath’s hot springs, pouring out a million litres of scalding water every day, have drawn people here for thousands of years, including the Romans, who built a grand spa complex visited by people from Asia, Africa and all over the Roman world.

In the 800s, Alfred the Great built a wall around the ruined spa on Roman foundations to defend the town against the Danes, and it remained a tiny walled city with a Saxon street grid for the next eight centuries, right up to the mid-1700s, by which time Bath had become the hottest resort for the British aristocracy in the country.

The pressure of that sparked a building boom that saw the city burst through its wall and climb the steep hills of the verdant river valley it sits in. It’s a new town, like Dubai or Las Vegas, except it settled into its current shape just over two centuries ago.

The Saxons set up a powerful monastery here in the early Middle Ages, and Edgar, the first King of All England, was crowned at the Saxon abbey in 973.

The current Abbey was completed in the 1530s, just in time for the Dissolution of the Monasteries when an enraged Henry VIII kicked the monks out on pain of death and ransacked the brand new church, leaving it a gutted shell until his gentler daughter, Elizabeth I, took the Abbey and the city under her royal wing.

All this and more is visible in the city’s fabric and dramatic landscape. Bath resident Rod Sweet – veteran journalist, author, walker and history fan – takes you on an immersive tour through the city’s 2,000-year evolution, exploring the narrow lanes, intimate courtyards, architectural icons and hidden gems, telling the stories of the people and ideas that shaped this remarkable place.

© 2026 Rod Sweet (Lydbog): 9780466821845

Udgivelsesdato

Lydbog: 21. april 2026