Jane Odiwe Jane Austen Sequels

Regular visitors to my blog know that I have a long-standing love affair with the City of Bath. We know that Jane Austen lived here from 1801-1806 and that her feelings about the place may well have been very mixed as time went on. I can feel a whole other blogpost coming on about Austen's feelings but I wanted to share some pictures that were taken of a walk from Lyncombe Hill to Combe Down. I have to thank Janet Aylmer for the directions to part of this walk. Her book In the footsteps of Jane Austen outlines a walk that Jane Austen took with a friend, Mrs Chamberlayne, through Bath to Lyncombe and Widcombe in May 1801. The book is annotated with lots of facts and pictures of Bath in Jane's time - a very enjoyable book and without it I would never have discovered this walk! In a letter to her sister Cassandra, Jane wrote: Tuesday 26 May 1801 ...I walked yesterday morning with Mrs Chamberlayne to Lyncombe and Widcombe, and in the evening I drank tea with the Holders. - Mrs Ch...

One of my favourite walks in Bath starts at Jane Austen's house at no. 4 Sydney Place and takes me through the gardens opposite where we know our favourite novelist walked. Although the gardens do not look the same as they did in Jane's day, they are still a lovely place for a stroll or provide the starting point for something a little more energetic. There is a gate almost hidden amongst the greenery which leads onto the Kennet and Avon canal path and if you turn left after passing through it you can follow the canal for a good twenty minute walk to the village of Bathampton and beyond if you've the stamina! The photos below are a selection of ones taken over time, but I hope they give you an idea of what you might see in Sydney Gardens and on the canal path. In 1819 Pierce Egan wrote about the gardens and canal in his book of Walks through Bath - The Kennet and Avon Canal runs through the gardens, with two elegant cast-iron bridges thrown over it, after the manner of the ...