You don't need to have seen the BBC's recent rerun of Pride And Prejudice to take one look at Bath and think Jane Austen. The graceful Georgian architecture executed in honey-coloured Cotswold stone immediately conjures up images of young women in crinolenes and Colin Firth lookalikes in tight breeches.
The romantic atmosphere which Austen evokes in her society tales lives on: it's part of a heritage which attracts 1.5 million visitors to the city each year.
Having taken the Aer Lingus 7.55 a.m. commuter flight to Bristol, this visitor is amazed to be sitting on a bench in the heart of Bath before 10 o'clock - a feat rarely managed when the destination is a desk in D'Olier Street. It's a compact city, ideal for a day-tripper in a hurry. An introductory walking or bus tour seems the best first option and I opt to walk.
"Free walks start here," reads the sign outside the Pump Room in the central, pedestrianised area. About 70 expectant tourists are milling around at 10.30 a.m. when two honorary guides from the Mayor's Corps arrive. We're split into two groups and I follow in the wake of a sprightly Scottish pensioner named Douglas.
The two-hour walk focuses on 18th-century Bath when the beautiful people flocked to the only spa town in Britain with, at 46.5C (117 F), positively hot, natural springs. Of course the Romans had put it on the tourist map centuries before, but their extensive baths were only excavated in 1876.
Looking through the locked gate at the small Cross Bath - closed in 1978 after a meningitis scare - Douglas explains that Bath hopes to live up to its name again in the new millennium. The city is banking on £6 million from the government's Millennium Fund towards a £12 million restoration of the baths for public use.
Civic pride blooms from the opulent, colour-co-ordinated (pinks and purples) window-boxes and hanging baskets which adorn the streetscape. The stop-and-start walk takes in such architectural beauties as Queen's Square, where Jane Austen once stayed at No 13 (this turns out to be a boast of many another house in the city), the Circus and the Royal Crescent. Behind the classical facades there are more mundane details such as the "hanging loos" added as afterthoughts at the back of the 18th-century houses.
It's 12.30 p.m. as the walking group disperses at Pulteney Bridge over the Avon, which has the distinction of doubling as a 18th-century shopping mall. Two bored-looking American teenagers suddenly come to life as they wheel off towards the Warner Bros shop to re-embrace the 20th century. For me, the stone-walled coolness of the 16th-century Abbey provides welcome, hushed respite from the sun-baked streets. Visitors are invited to contribute £1.50 at the door before taking a pew to gaze up at the magnificent, fan-vaulted ceiling and huge stained-glass windows.
For lunch, the Firehouse Rotisserie on John Street has been recommended for its Californian-Mediterranean cuisine and its particularly good-looking waiting staff - of both sexes. The chicken and avocado salad is fine; the chocolate and hazelnut torte delicious, but there's no Mr Darcy among the waiters today.
In the early-afternoon swell of visitors, a 15-minute queue forms outside the Roman Baths. Nearby, Dubliner Henry Dagg is producing extraordinarily harmonious sounds by bowing a saw in Bath's No 1 busking spot.
Taking possession of a "personalised acoustic guide" at the baths (admission £6), I have a glimpse of the future: everybody, just everybody, is walking around with these elongated mobile-phones to their ears. But you walk, don't talk; signs indicate when and what numbers to key into the handset to get a running commentary.
It's hard to believe the murky green water bubbling up in the colonnaded quadrangle fell as rain 10,000 years ago. It percolated 4,000 metres down to the Earth's core before being forced back up.
A quarter of a million gallons of this water bubbles up every day, but they still charge for it. In the genteel surroundings of the Pump Room, where a quartet plays under the chandeliers, I eschew the champagne tea for two at £29 and take the waters instead, at 45 pence a glass. Smelling of hard-boiled eggs and tasting of rust, a few mouthfuls of the lukewarm spa offering is enough. It may contain 43 minerals and seven trace elements, but it's difficult to understand how it wouldn't make the sick sicker. And to think, doctors used to prescribe up to a gallon a day.
Ten minutes' walk away, the Assembly Rooms are a peaceful and airy contrast to the crowded, clammy baths. They opened in 1771 as a "stated and general meeting place of the polite persons of both sexes for the sake of conversation, gallantry, news and play": you can inspect the ballroom, the octagonal card room and the tea room. Once again, a personal acoustic guide is on hand to transport you back into the time of the "rustling dresses, sparkling jewels, waving feathers and music of tiny footsteps" which so entranced Dickens's Mr Pickwick.
Beneath the Assembly Rooms, the Costume Museum displays a collection of fashion over 400 years. The S-Bend Corset which served to make 21-inch Kate Mosses out of Sophie Dahls catches the eye.
There's still time to look for what must be the only museum in the world devoted to a bun. But, unfortunately, that doesn't allow dallying on the way in quintessentially English-sounding shops such as Droopy and Brown's, Hobbs and Jolly's, not to mention some of the familiar staples of Grafton Street. Bath is a shoppers' delight but Jane Austen's annual allowance of £20 wouldn't go far, even in a day.
"Museum" turns out to be rather a grand word for Sally Lunn's House which claims to be the oldest in Bath, dating from 1482. It commemorates a young wan who came over from France in 1680 to work in a bakery there. Her talents at making brioche were soon appreciated by the locals who started to request "Sally Lunn's". These renowned tea cakes are still made in the house and in the basement there's a reconstruction of the bakery Sally would have laboured in.
With no time to take afternoon tea in the house, I content myself with a purchase of three Sally Lunns. Resembling giant burger buns, they come in presentation boxes and make the perfect souvenir of a day in Bath - at the princely sum of £1.08 each.
As usual, a strange city shrinks in direct proportion to increasing familiarity, so I return to the station ahead of schedule for the 10-minute glide on the Inter-City back to Bristol where taxis wait at the station door. Despite a determination not to be paranoidly early, there's 75 minutes to kill in an aiport which can be toured in 20 seconds, before the 7.05 p.m. flight to Dublin.
And home in Glenageary just in time for the nine o'clock news, a toasted Sally Lunn is the final taste of a day in Bath.
