The Carriage Tour of Bath: 30 minutes of horse drawn escapism

Always on the lookout for new types of tour, and sometimes finding them, here is another first for The Tour of All Tours: a horse drawn carriage tour. The hook to this one is that it helps you imagine Georgian Bath from the point of view of a noble, since this was a place where persons of quality were transported in precisely this way. Seeing as quite a number of the city's attractions and tours are about helping you imagine you are in the city's 18th Century hey day, how does this one fair?

This picture is about as dumb as the picture of me sitting behind the wheel of a Porsche in Stuttgart. I love these readymade tourist shots taken by other tourists! With just me inside, the carriage set off at a genteel pace, only a little quicker than a fast walk. It picked up every tiny imperfection and pot hole in the road so, creeping slowly along at this modest speed felt like the wisest thing to do. In any case, I was not going anywhere in particular, this was a promenade: it was as much about being seen as it was about seeing the city.

One of the first things that struck me when I was being led around was the smell of the horses. I found this incredibly evocative, most probably because I am so rarely in contact with these animals. To be pulled by another living creature, or creatures, is an entirely different feeling to driving a car or being driven. The horses have their moods and rhythms quite different to ours.

Of all the tours I have taken, I would compare this one most to the River Avon Cruise. Not only is it is also based in Bath, indeed their paths cross at Pulteney Bridge, but it is also a tour where the main attraction is the mode of transport. Where they differ is the cruise offered some commentary on the return leg whereas this carriage tour had no commentary at all. You could call it a one trick pony... but it was a good trick. A guide would have interfered in the experience. 

Although the carriage is a sophisticated form of transport, and they do their best to keep you in the historical tourist bubble, you are still in a real city: we passed the fish and chip shop. This makes me immediately imagine inappropriate vehicle tours: a tour of Glasgow's council housing estates in a Rolls Royce, a tour of a monastery's grounds in a beer laden pedibus or a tour of flower gardens in a tank. 

The rain started really lashing it down and it was at this moment I felt glad to be the only passenger. Sitting by the sides it would have been easy to get soaked in a shower like this, and that would be most unfitting...

The carriage gets a great deal of attention; even more than an expensive car it turns heads. Lounging in the back all by myself it was easy to start feeling like a VIP. I was surprised at just how effectively this works: cars or boats don't do this nearly as well, but a horse drawn carriage plays to the inner aristocrat that lurks inside of us supremely well. Yes, it helped a great deal to be the only passenger due to the awful weather; I should imagine the benefit that the carriage confers could be divided by the number of passengers.

There comes the crashing realisation after a short while, however, that the people in the street are not turning to look at you, they are looking at the carriage. And not only do they look, some of the dedicated tourists take pictures too. If I am destined to appear in the holiday snaps and videos of those taking The Chinese Bus Tour, then that is only justice, I suppose, seeing as I have featured some of them on this blog previously.

The duration was just about perfect: it was a thirty five minute circular tour. Any longer and it would have become ever so slightly ordinary. Whilst I can't see myself investing in a horse drawn carriage of my own any time soon, or more to the point, ever, this is the next best thing. I can imagine taking a carriage tour in another city on the strength of this tour of Bath, though I suppose it is not everywhere that such a ride exists. I suppose, following this line of tours, next I'll have to take a camel ride in the desert and a husky sled through the snow. Those are both attractive for their novelty value but I think I'd still take the horse carriage, it's just that bit more sophisticated.  

The River Avon Cruise

This cruise along the River Avon began at a pleasant spot in Bath city-centre where the boat is moored beside Pulteney Bridge. I walked onboard just as the navigator was loosening the ropes, his mate, the guide, doing likewise, and with that the boat eased out into the river. We had a brief health and safety announcement and then were pretty much left to our own devices for the outbound leg of the trip.  

When we approached Cleveland Bridge I remembered The Bridges of London Tour that I covered last year, also a boat cruise with live commentary. That cruise was very different, however, as it was given by a TV celebrity and was part of a large arts festival. For all of its build up, that cruise was far less comfortable with the format of the boat tour than this river cruise was. The Thames tour was essentially a TV series delivered, off the cuff, on a boat. This, however, is a long-established concern, and the boat felt as if it was the second home of the navigator and guide. Just letting the first half of the trip be a quiet, relaxed boat ride was fine as there was plenty to see. We knew we'd hear more about it on the way back so it gave us a chance to take a good look and awaken our curiosity. The Thames cruise did it the other way round giving the commentary on the way out followed by a silent return. That felt like an anti-climax that was only covered over by the copious wine and canape. But I digress. Back to the River Avon.

While the crew were in their element here, less at home on the river were some of the tourists who had rented row boats and got themselves stuck in between trees. I can imagine incompetent rowing being a staple of the hen/stag party weekends which flock to Bath, something I will no doubt see more of in the coming weeks. There can be a pleasure in doing something badly, after all, particularly with a little wine. We steered aside the mayhem and as we progressed further from the boathouse from whence they came, the rowers generally looked more competent and pleased with themselves. 

As we made our way out of the Bath urban area, Solsbury Hill came into view. Our guide mentioned it as the hill that inspired the Peter Gabriel song by the same name which is about having a spiritual experience that doesn't fit with the world of the flyovers and pylons. I don't know if Peter Gabriel has written other songs about the Bath area where he has lived for many years, if so they might lend themselves to being put together into a musical themed tour in the manner of The Beatles Walking Tour of Liverpool, The Smiths Walking Tour of Manchester, or the Crossroads of Sabbath a heavy metal walk around Birmingham. These sorts of tours have a big appeal to fans as they bring them closer to the musicians, their lives and inspirations, though going all the way up this hill just for one song is a bit too much effort for the pay back, unless you too are guaranteed a spiritual experience... or your money back.

The cruise came with a map but it was not in any way necessary to follow this to make sense of the cruise. Looking at it now, I realise I was quite unaware of the river's meander as I was just relaxing and looking at the river, the banks and the hills as they drifted by.

We were told the final bridge we approached at Bathampton was the most expensive toll bridge in Europe in terms of price per distance travelled. It must be one of the prettiest, too, not that that is much consolation to motorists. The small pier in front of the weir was the half-way point where we stopped to pick up some more passengers and where a gaggle of teenage girls were swimming and squealing in the river. This was quite definitely not the canals of Birmingham that I was walking along just a few days ago where you'd be more likely to find dumped traffic cones than teenagers in the water.

On the return leg we got a good deal more commentary as the guide talked us through the route. If there is one thing I thought could have been improved it would be to adjust the sound balance: it was very bass heavy. He had a warm voice with a gentle West country burr when speaking normally, but amplified, he seemed to suddenly drop an octave, like a Laurie Anderson routine. He told us he had been working on the river for 14 years and had no desire to do an office job as this was far better. He certainly did look very relaxed and, on a warm Summer's day like this I could see why; the river was without a doubt the nicest place to be. He said that he didn't get bored with cruising back and forth as the river is always changing, and he got to meet people from all over the world. I could see his point.

From the boat's point of view you see the landscape and hills around the city very well but the city streets very little. The city does not precisely embrace the river Avon, it seems more wary of it and focused instead upon the abbey. The commentary reflected this river perspective, however, and so we were told about the city as a whole, its relationship to the hills and why they are not built upon. Rather than a walk which is conceived from the desire to tell a story and then realised by finding the best route to illustrate that narrative, this was a tour that followed a pre-existing natural route and then described the city from that natural feature's point of view. As opposed to a location tour, such as Bath Abbey, which gets complicated because there are many ways to explore and describe the building, a river cruise makes things simpler by admitting only two possibilities: upstream or downstream. Because of this, and the less exclusive focus on history, the cruise did not run into the same frustrations around its narrative: the cruise just naturally flowed, the river bringing its own sense of narrative.

I found that the people on the boat chatted to one another more freely than on walking tours and one in particular, the man on the left with glasses, had a habit of saying, "Just what the doctor ordered, eh!" He'd repeat this every ten minutes, about the cruise, about the breakfast he had this morning and about the eleven-day trip to the UK the young man on the right was taking. This visitor to the UK was originally from Hong Kong but was now living in NYC and this was his first time here. He had been to London and he'd been to Edinburgh and now he was in Bath. Just what the doctor ordered, eh!

Back in the city and near the end of the cruise, we came again to the elegant Pulteney Bridge modelled on the Ponte Vecchio. It turned out to be less than elegant when viewed from this angle. Walking guides have made similar observations about a number of Bath buildings which present a unified facade while having individual and less dignified rears. Passing under it brought us back to our starting point and the end of the cruise. It was understated and very pleasant, a relaxing hour away from the bustle of the shops, buskers, cars and people. It was not an escape from the tourists, of course, but even they seemed to relax and quieten down when gently chugging through the water. They simply became normal people.