48 hours in Bath

Bath is a small city that behaves like a large one. Everything worth seeing sits inside about a square mile, which sounds easy until you realise that square mile also contains four hundred thousand other people’s weekend. The trick to two days here is sequencing: being at the popular things when they are quiet, and at the quiet things when everyone else is queueing.

This is the itinerary we give guests, written from the house in Newbridge. Adjust the walking if you would rather bus in.

Day one, morning: the obvious things, done early

Walk into town along the canal. It is flat, it takes about thirty-five minutes, and you arrive at the back of the city rather than through the traffic, which sets the tone for the whole day. Stop at Basil’s Bakery on the way for something to eat while you walk. It is the closest good thing to the house and worth the detour on its own.

Go straight to the Roman Baths. Not after coffee, not after a look at the shops. Straight there, as early as you can manage. The Great Bath at nine in the morning with steam coming off it is one of the most moving sights in England. The same room at two in the afternoon in August is a corridor of shoulders. Book ahead; at weekends and in school holidays it is not optional.

Bath Abbey is directly outside when you come out, and we would go in. If you have any head for heights at all, take the tower tour: it is the only way to see how Bath actually fits together, with the crescents stacked up the hillside and the river bending round the back. Check current tour times before you commit your morning to it.

Day one, lunch

You will want to sit down. Café Lucca is a comfortable, unhurried lunch in the middle of everything, and Colonna & Small’s is where to go if you care about coffee more than you care about lunch. It is a serious coffee bar and the people behind it know exactly what they are doing.

Day one, afternoon: the architecture

Walk up through the town to the Circus, then along Brock Street to the Royal Crescent. Do it in that order. The Circus is a closed circle that reveals itself slowly, and then Brock Street is deliberately mean and narrow, and then the Royal Crescent opens out in front of you across the lawn. John Wood the Younger built that sequence on purpose and it still works two hundred and fifty years later.

Then keep going into Royal Victoria Park, which is where locals actually spend the afternoon, and sit on the grass below the Crescent for a while. In summer the hot-air balloons go up from the park in the evening.

Come back down towards the river for Pulteney Bridge and the weir in the late afternoon. The light between about five and seven is when Bath looks like the postcards, and it is free.

Day one, dinner

The Circus Restaurant is the one we book for something that matters: modern British, beautifully sited between the Circus and the Royal Crescent, and small enough that you must book. The Chequers is the other end of the same idea: a proper Bath pub with a smart dining room, and our choice for a good meal without a production around it. Pintxo de Bath, near the Theatre Royal, is where to go if you want to eat six small things and drink sherry, which is a perfectly respectable ambition.

Day two, morning: the spa, or the hill

Two options, and they suit different people.

Thermae Bath Spa is the one everybody wants: naturally warm mineral water in the middle of the city, with a rooftop pool that looks straight out over the Abbey. It is expensive and it is worth it, and it books up well in advance. If you are going to do it, book it before you book anything else about the trip. Steam rising off a rooftop pool over a Georgian skyline is the thing you will describe to people when you get home.

If that is not you, climb Alexandra Park instead. Twenty minutes of proper uphill from the station side of the river and you get the single best view of the whole city, with nobody charging you for it.

Day two, afternoon: out of the centre

Prior Park is our favourite thing in Bath that most visitors miss: an eighteenth-century landscape garden with a Palladian bridge over the lake and the whole city laid out behind it. It is a National Trust property on a steep hillside, so wear proper shoes, and check how to get there before you set out: the parking situation is deliberately restrictive and going by bus or on foot is part of the design.

If the weather is generous and you have the legs for it, the Bath Skyline walk starts near there and loops around the eastern hills through woodland and meadow. It is a good few miles and a proper afternoon out.

Day two, the last evening

Come back towards the house and eat locally. Napulé, in Lower Weston, does proper Neapolitan pizza and is exactly right for a last night when nobody wants an occasion. Mai Thai on Chelsea Road is the other one we use. Or walk down to The Boathouse by the river and have a drink outside while the light goes. It is the natural end of the riverside walk from the house, and a better last hour than another restaurant.