Bath Hotels

Bath Sommerset hotels with discounts and special offers

On this site you will find Bath Hotels many with 70% off standard rates. They offer the best prices in the best areas of Bath.

Bath is an ancient spa town surrounded by seven hills. Though only twelve miles from Bristol, BATH has a very different feel from its neighbour - more harmonious, compact, leisurely and complacent. The city's elegant crescents and Georgian buildings are studded with plaques naming Bath's eminent inhabitants from its heyday as a spa resort; it was here that Jane Austen wrote Persuasion and Northanger Abbey , and where Gainsborough established himself as a portraitist and landscape painter. Nowadays Bath ranks as one of Britain's top ten tourist cities, yet the place has never lost the exclusive air those names evoke.

Bath owes its name and fame to its hot springs - the only ones in the country - which made it a place of reverence for the local Celtic population, though it had to wait for Roman technology to create a fully fledged bathing establishment. The baths fell into decline with the departure of the Romans, but the town later regained its importance under the Saxons, its abbey seeing the coronation of the first king of all England , Edgar, in 973. A new bathing complex was built in the sixteenth century, popularized by the visit of Elizabeth I in 1574, and the city reached its fashionable zenith in the eighteenth century, when Beau Nash ruled the town's social scene. It was at this time that Bath acquired its ranks of Palladian mansions and town houses, all built in the local Bath stone , which is now enshrined in building regulations as an obligatory element in any new constructions in the city. Three miles southeast of the centre, near the university campus, Claverton holds a museum of Americana amid gorgeous rolling countryside.

The swathes of parkland between Bath's Regency developments lend the city a spacious feel, but the sheer weight of traffic pouring through the central streets can be a major turn-off. Drivers are advised to use one of the Park-and-Ride car parks around the periphery - and if you're coming from Bristol, note that you can cycle all the way along a cycle-path that follows the route of a disused railway line and the course of the Avon.

Although Bath could easily be seen on a day-trip from London, it really deserves a couple of days on the spot; the city is chock-full of museums, but some of the greatest enjoyment comes simply from the streets, with their pale gold architecture and sweeping vistas

Bath is served by the Bath Spa railway station, which has regular connections to London Paddington, Bristol Temple Meads, Cardiff, Swansea, Plymouth and Penzance (see Great Western Main Line), and also Westbury, Warminster, Salisbury, Southampton, Portsmouth and Brighton (see Wessex Main Line). Services are provided by First Great Western (fast InterCity services) and Wessex Trains (semi-fast or local services). There is a suburban station on the main line, Oldfield Park, which has a limited commuter service to Bristol. The charming Green Park station, once operated by the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, was closed by Beeching in 1965, but the building survives and is used for shopping.

Though Bath does not have an airport, the city is not far from Bristol International Airport, which may be accessed by car and by bus or taxi, and by rail via Bristol Temple Meads or Nailsea & Backwell.

National Express Coaches operates coach services from Bath to a number of cities. Internally, Bath has a number of bus routes run by the First Group, with services to surrounding towns and cities. The company also runs open-top double decker tour bus services around the city.

Attractions in Bath include:
Roman Baths Museum / Pump Room - The City's most famous attraction, once a temple to Sulis Minerva
Thermae Bath Spa - contains two spectacular natural thermal baths, where mineral-rich waters invigorate and calm
Bath Abbey - built of the site of the Saxon Church where Edgar, first king of united England was crowned in 973
Building of Bath Museum and Museum of East Asian Art - fine Chinese jade carvings
Museum of Costume Victoria Art Gallery - collection of British and European Art