Bath is invariably manic with tourists and its easy to get sucked into the trail, laid out neatly to bleed all your currency and whisk you round all the very oldest things we've got in the space of a few hours visit.

You probably should do it once in your life. Visit the remarkable Baths, visit the Abbey and the Jane Austen Centre with a Sally Lunn Bun sitting heavy in your stomach...

But if you ever come back to Bath and arrive in the city by train, go out the back of the station, cross over the river and turn left into Widcombe. Set yourself up for a hike with a coffee and fish-finger butty at the brilliant Kindling Coffee then head on down to Ralph Allan Drive on your right.

15 minutes walk from the centre of swarming Bath city-centre is the gloriously forgotten Bath Abbey Cemtery, designed and laid out in 1843 by John Augustus Laudon as a place for recreation and education (as well as burial presumably!).

The gate is always unlocked and there's hardly ever anybody there. It's a wonderful place to idle a midsummer's afternoon amid the butteflies and rampant wild flowers with a rare view over the city - the Abbey itself framed by the trees and floodlit as the sun sets.

As you wander up and down the rows of headstones and frozen headless angels, you can find some pretty amazing inscriptions (if you're really keen, you can pick up a pamphlet from the Abbey itself, detailing the most remarkable.) My favourite is Arnold Ridley, better known as Private Godfrey in Dad's Army, RIP.

If you tire of the cemetery, another 15 minute walk steeply uphill, will bring you exhausted to the spectacular Prior Park. Althouth the building itself is now a private school, the grounds are managed by the National Trust and contain a rare Palladian Bridge well worth the entry cost. It's etched in places with 19th Century graffiti, which makes for fascinating reading.

It'd be a rare day, you didn't spot a deer in the gardens but if you are out of luck, the view back over Bath just keeps on getting better the higher up you go.

All that hill walking and you'll need a bottle of strong organic cider, available at the White Hart back in Widcombe. There is a fantastic beer garden and the food is delicious, if a little pricey.