Don't Fall Asleep On the Bus Or You Might End Up in Wales

One of the coolest things about the ASE program is that most classes get a designated day during the semester to take a study trip. At the beginning of the semester I decided to drop one of my classes, Ghosts and the Gothic, the reason being that each of my classes at that time averaged one book a week. While that might be doable in Lancaster, it wasn't something I wanted to be stressing out about while in Bath. So instead I transferred into another class, The Romans in Britain. Last Friday Romans in Britain had a scheduled study trip to the Roman fortress towns of Caerleon and Caerwent.

What I did not know was that these places are in Wales. I was unexpectedly in Wales last week. Europe is glorious.

Our tutor Rob lives near Caerleon so our class of seven (along with Andrew Butterworth) met him there. When we got out of the van, Rob gave us a breakdown of the day and then in true ASE fashion asked if we were ready for a coffee break. It was literally an hour and a half drive and we were rewarded with coffee. The British are apparently worn out by any trip longer than a few hours. Obviously we weren't complaining.

Breakfast (coffee and cake; it seems in England cake is acceptable at any time of day) was had in a place called "Cafe Ffwrwm" which is pronounced Cafe Forum. Of course. The Welsh seem to have an irrational fear of vowels. After that we went to the Roman bath houses which was ironically my first experience with them in the U.K.

Kind of cheating because it's just sand.

The description of the bathing process is really interesting. A person (soldier or civilian) would have the option of working out at the bath house. Then he would coat his body with olive oil and go into a sort of sauna in order to sweat impurities out. The oil would trap the sweat outside the skin. Then he (or his slave, if he had one) would use a tool called a strigil to scrape all the oil and sweat off the skin, after which he would take a dip to rinse everything off.

a strigil in the museum

Honestly, the process sounds quite nice to me. I wouldn't mind a good old Roman style bath once in a while. Of course, there's a gross part. Most people would just have their sweat and oil mixtures thrown away, but the mixture from gladiators was saved and given to women because gladiator sweat was considered a luxury. Gross, and frankly, TMI.

Rob modeling a gladiator helmet in the bath house.

After the bath house we went to see the remains of the barracks.

View from the latrine! Yippee!

We also ate our lunch at a nearby amphitheatre.

Luckily there was beautiful weather so we could eat outside. Unluckily there was a British couple who decided to canoodle across the way. Awkward.

We then drove about half an hour to Caerwent to see another fortress there.

Caerwent also has the best preserved town walls in Britain. We walked the whole length of what remains, and it was an impressively long walk.

Of course they used to be much higher, but it was cool to be walking around something that is so old.

Caerwent was the last stop of the day so after seeing the wall we drove back to Bath. My next study trip is this Friday -- my Worlds Beyond Oxford class is going to Oxford (appropriately enough) to visit some relevant places in the lives of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Don't get me wrong, seeing the Roman fortresses was very cool and something I'd never be able to do if not for this program -- but my English nerd side is really pumped to be back in familiar territory. Expect updates on Oxford soon!!