| for whom the bell tolls... |
|
My personal highlight was the climbing of the steeple of Bath Abbey! The administrator of the Abbey offered this opportunity to Jenny and me when we had our internship day at the church. During lunch time he told us that they had plans to restore the steeple and to make a museum out of it. At the moment visitors are not allowed to go up there, as it is in bad repair and the roof would not tolerate too many people up there... Anyway, we asked him if we could possibily see the steeple and he promised to take us up at the end of the day - and so he did.
In the afternoon we met for the climb. Our first station, after many of tiny steep steps made out of stone, was the church bell room. There he explained to us the history of the bells and of the people who rang them. As it was close to a clock hour, he told us to climb up the wooden framework where the bells were fixed, so that we stood right next to them when they were ringing. This was really amazing, standing among all these bells and hearing their loud and clangorous sound! Fortunately they were not pulled by a rope anymore, but hit automatically with a plastic hammer, stated the administrator. Otherwise we would probably be deaf by now ;).
After the ringing we went up to our second station, which was the roof of the steeple. From there you have a wonderful view of Bath - and you can look right into the Roman Baths! So this was the perfect end of a great internship day. The only thing that took away a bit of the pleasure was the thought that we had to climb down all those stairs again...
Helena Hartmann |