After getting loads of great advice on an upcoming trip to a Lancaster Uni open day, the next stop on me and my lad’s English road trip is a weekend to Bath Uni.
Any advice on what’s Bath like to live in (mainly as a student, but also generally)? We’re actually stopping the night in Chippenham because stopping in Bath would require me to take out a second mortgage - is there anywhere decent to eat there?
We’ve looked round Bath uni before, and had a Youth Hostel holiday there, and love the place, but the main thing putting us off is I suspect it is very, very expensive to live (compared to, for example, Lancaster). I also suspect it is one of those places where landlords are stopping renting to students in order to tap in to the more profitable Airbnb tourist market.
Lovely, but very pricey. Gets much better after you’ve stopped being a student in my experience, there’s a fair bit of bad feeling between local people and students due to there being 2 unis in a very small city and a massive affordable housing vs. HMO crisis. It’s a great city though and there are some really good community aspects. Rents are sky high, if I was moving there as a student now, I’d be looking at moving to one of the surrounding villages after my first year (providing you’ve got a car) as a cheaper option. I haven’t lived there for 5 years so not sure how much has changed but I know a fair few independent businesses and chains have left cause of skyrocketing rates.
Not sure about Chippers but Bath has loads of good restaurants and pubs, there are a few good independent Italians and my mate runs a BBQ place. Really good bottle shop there too.
A bit, but it’s more that they’ve stopped renting to local people and turned their houses into either AirBnbs or crammed 8 bedrooms in for students.
Yeah, it’s beautiful but expensive. I was at a comedy show in Bath last night and it became evident that most people there (including me) were from Bristol. There’s a good reason for this though… Bath has much better medium sized venues! There’s no good equivalent of the Komedia or the Forum in Bristol at the moment.
SWX is about Komedia-sized isn’t it? Do agree that the city is mostly bereft of mid-sized venues (and larger ones too tbh). Beacon is supposed to be reopening this year but I’ll believe it when I see it.
I reckon Bath would be quite a fun place to be a student but would be a little concerned about both expense and the availability of accommodation. It’s a fairly small City with two universities so second and third year accommodation is really competitive, and given that the big unis are still working through the backlog of oversubscribed courses from the pandemic it might be the case that there’s literally nowhere available for second/third years for a couple of years at least.
Bath has loads of nice food, would recommend Bosco which does much better pizza and pasta than you’d expect for very reasonable prices.
Think that’s down to the split between universities tbh. Bath Spa is seen as the ‘arty’ one and Bath as the ‘sporty’ one so students don’t really intermingle much. Fringe Arts is quite a cool thing to get involved with but isn’t uni-based.
Think got quite a full itinerary but anything (we won’t really be able to travel out the centre) but anything nice to look at or places to eat let me know
-Roman baths/Thermae spa
-Jane Austen centre/Regency tea rooms
-Bus or boat tour
-a couple of things at the theatre
-waking Jane Austen theatrical tour
Look out for whether there’s anything good on at the Forum or Komedia while you’re there, two of the best venues in the country. Grab dinner at the Beckford Bottle Shop (booking recommended).
Botanical gardens in Victoria park are nice if it’s sunny, so are Sydney Gardens
Used to be a couple of really good vegan restaurants just behind the abbey but I think they’ve both changed their names since I lived there
Independent Spirit for booze
Fashion museum is good if you’re into that kinda thing
So is the American museum
Go and watch Bath City
Off to Birmingham with my rents at the beginning of September and might do a solo trip to Bristol and Bath afterwards, never been to either before. Never really travelled on my own in England full stop
Back when I was living in Bath I remember Schwartz Bros being the go-to amazing-burger place. This was before the gourmet burger takeover though. I’m curious if it holds its own in the competitive burger landscape of 2024.