Day 5 - Saturday, July 13th

Despite hearing from a local that the weather had been “rubbish” lately, we awake to another delightfully sunny day and ready ourselves to spend more time exploring Bath with Abi now as our tour guide.  But first we head to the local Abbey set atop a hill and again from the 16th Century, apparently when there was a bit of a building boom in the Cotswolds.  We were ushered into the small tidy sanctuary by two smiling ladies and I asked about John Wesley who was known to have preached here.  Yes, they confirmed; however, they explained the Methodist Chapel built later was no longer operational.  After taking a look around at this small gem of a place, we began making our way out.  One of the ladies mentioned that they often watch the news from the states.  “Yes”, I offered as they smiled expectantly, “This is our struggle.”  

We then walked the short distance down to the platform to take the GWR into Bath for the day where we were soon heading up Gay St. and stopping to get tickets to the escape room at the Mary Shelley Museum for later that afternoon.  Then it was on to the Circle and the sprawling lawn beneath the Royal Crescent.  Afterwards we poked our way along Walcot St. where Ella found a Ramones t-shirt at an outdoor stall as we headed back to the city center arriving in time for an annual summer carnival that capped off our afternoon.  Abi had to retrieve her dorm room key from a friend in town for the weekend who is staying there, and we decide to split up with she and Ella heading to the school and Laura and I stopping at the market prior to heading back to our cottage to make dinner.  

Abi’s friend was delayed by an urge to stop at a bar on her way to the dorm and Ella and Abi unfortunately missed the next train to Freshford.  After an hour’s long wait, they then learned the next train was cancelled altogether, so they finally booked an Uber arriving back tired and hungry at 9:30 pm.

The girls settled in to watch more Dr. Who episodes as Laura and I headed up to bed.  I stay up reading on the iPad and I receive a notification that loud noises like gunfire had been heard at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania causing Secret Service to whisk him from the stage.  I continue reading my Wikipedia page on Somerset.  I then receive another notification saying Trump’s limo had left the venue.  I again thought little of it thinking maybe someone had set off some leftover fireworks in the general vicinity, which had perhaps caused a stir at the rally abbreviating Trump’s typically rambling stream-of-conscience remarks.  I again return to my reading only to receive another notification about a possible gunman at the rally.  I finally hop over to the NYT which is reporting that shots have been fired at the event.  A YouTube video confirms for me that Trump had indeed received fire and was taken bleeding from the podium as the Secret Service scrambled.  I debate whether to wake Laura finally doing so after several minutes pass.  Abi then knocks at the door looking for a charging cable, and she watches a video of the event.  It is now past midnight and we are all up with heads spinning at the change of events.  We worry that the place we will be coming home to will not be quite the same place as the one we left only five days before.