Between Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, we are collectively gagging for a prairie girl summer. The kind of summer where we deck ourselves out in our finest peasant smock, spend hours executing Pinterest-worthy dutch braids, and sit in fields hoping that Alan Rickman in Sense & Sensibility rocks up on horseback and sweeps us off our feet. To make my personal prairie girl dreams a reality, I ventured to Bath in Somerset, England.
For six years, Bath was the hometown to the Donatella of prairie girl romance, Jane Austen, and served as the setting for her novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Austen didn’t view the city in a favourable light and wrote it off in both novels. I am an unapologetic worshipper at the chapel of Jane Austen, but after visiting Bath, I have concluded that in her writings of the city, she was being a little bitch.
Bath is a magic city. It’s golden and winding and skirted with luscious greenery and rolling hills. Everything about it evokes a cinematic feeling — the kind of feeling us aspiring prairie girls unceasingly chase. It is the kind of city where guides feel fruitless because once you’re there, you just want to roam around, not tethered to any Top 12 Things To Do In Bath listicles. Though I am still going to offer up a few choice suggestions on how to suck the marrow out of this perfect city.
Where to stay:
Because I am extremely dramatic, I didn’t want my accommodation to feel like it could be anywhere, I wanted to live like life was a movie. So instead of staying in the thick of the city, I booked at Homewood Country House Hotel, just a fifteen-minute drive out of the city centre.
I can not stress to you just how picturesque and beguiling the Homewood accommodation is. The house is an extraordinary, 21 bedroom manor. Perched on a hill of vast greenery and boasting too-die-for Georgian features, it feels like it is plucked straight out of a Merchant-Ivory production.
There’s a quaint mysticism to the accommodation area of the building. Walls are decorated with china plates, painting of flowers and ornamental lighting and the whole places smells heavenly thanks to the constant-burn of a slew of fireplaces.
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I legged it to Homewood immediately after arriving in Bath city from London. Though this is a prairie girl summer guide I should clarify that it is actually the dead of winter now and because I’m a whiny baby I couldn’t cop walking around in the cold after a three-hour coach ride. This didn’t matter though because Homewood possessed all of the things I could have possibly wanted out of my Bath trip.
I ended up booking for dinner and breakfast at the hotel, both were sublime. The hotel offers a completely vegan dinner set menu, which was a feast worthy of a da Vinci painting. I was very close to shedding real tears over the chocolate cake.
For breakfast, I went for a vegan-modified version of their full English — a real bloody treat. The main breakfast extravaganza is pregamed with toast and a selection of spreads. It is absolutely imperative that you try their cinnamon spread, I have literally never tasted something so sumptuous in my life.
Homewood is also home to an indulgent spa set up. There’s a hydrotherapy pool, sauna, steam room and heated outdoor swimming pool. It would be rude not to have a bath in Bath.
What to do:
Every guide I read to the city rattled off a flurry of historical things to check out. I am a very lazy tourist, and I prefer scouring for places to eat, drink and shop as opposed to lining up and forking out big bucks to experience perfectly preserved history. So I won’t lie, I didn’t really see much of what Bath is renowned for. The Roman Baths are, by all accounts, incredible, but it was like twenty squid entry and I’d much rather spend that cash on something I can a) consume b) wear. Sorry for spitting on the rich history of this city, I am an awful product of Gen z opulence.
The best advice I can offer you is to roam. There are so many nooks and cranny’s to this city and the best way to see it all is to lose your checklist inhibitions and saunter around from the crack of sparrow to the dead of night. Bath is one of those rare cities that feel completely safe, so wonder to your heart’s content.
Where to eat:
Because I gorged myself at breakfast, I couldn’t fathom the concept of eating a full-on lunch. I chose to indulge in a selection of cakes and the best goddamn coffee I’ve had in England at CASCARA — a vegan cafe in the heart of the city. CASCARA wouldn’t feel out of place in Brunswick East, and as I’ve been in the UK for a little over a month, it cured my homesickness for the warm embrace of a perfect soy latte.
For dinner, I had what can only be described as a revelatory experience. If you go to bath and you don’t hit up Chaiwalla, you are making the mistake of a lifetime. The hole in the wall eatery is responsible for one of the most heavenly creations I have ever shoved in my gob, an onion bhaji wrap. I actually can’t describe just how transcendental eating this was. It had everything you could possibly want out of a meal, crispy bhaji married with raw cabbage, carrots, onion, and lettuce. The crowning glory of the dish is the mango chutney, which you can take home for 3 quid. It was so fucking delicious that I headed back for seconds immediately after I had finished my first.
Where to drink:
Full transparency, I ended up going to CASCARA twice, it was freezing and I knew that there was a good chance that this was the best soy latte I was going to experience in England so I made the most of it.
The only bar I ended up frequenting in Bath was Opium bar, a charming hideaway self-described as “Bath’s best-known secret.” The bar borrows aesthetic cues from old Opium rooms. Perhaps more Peaky Blinders than Pride & Prejudice, it’s still cinematic as hell.
