Travelling to Bath by car

You ask us how difficult it will be to park in Bath during the Jane Austen Festival; alas, the answer- in a word- is VERY.
Travelling with Lady Catherine de Bourgh in her barouche box would be less vexatious. 
Getting held up by a masked highway man and having to hand over all your worldly wealth would be less expensive. 
We advise you, like Elizabeth Bennet advising her sister that they should not try to expose Wickham's perfidious character to the world, that "it ought not to be attempted". 

Bath has a few different Park and Ride car parks out of town, you can find out more about them here.

There are various short-stay & long-stay car parks in Bath city centre, however these are often very busy. Find out more here.

To help tackle harmful pollution, Bath operates a Clean Air Zone (CAZ). Charges apply daily, from midnight to midnight, all year round. Find out more about these charges here.

Please always allow extra time for travelling to events when navigating Bath by car as the city has only two main roads through it, which can get very congested, particularly on weekends. 

Public Transport

Arriving by train 

Bath Spa is the main city-centre train station for Bath. It is a 15 minute walk from the Jane Austen Centre which is nearer to top of town. Bath has easy train connections to London or Bristol and the rest of the South West. Train times can be found here. 
For those Austen visitors who hail from further afield, please be aware that in the UK we have semi-regular train strikes which not only affect the strike days themselves, but the days leading up to and after the train strikes have finished. You can check dates for future train strikes here. 

Arriving by bus or coach

Bath has numerous bus routes around the City, connecting Bath locations & the wider North East Somerset area. Find out and plan local bus travel here. 
Bath Bus Station is located next to the train station at the bottom of the city centre, approximately a 15 minutes walk from the Jane Austen Centre.
Coaches connect Bath with many major cities and airports. Find out more about arriving to Bath by coach here.

Airports

The closest airport to Bath is Bristol Airport.
Bristol Airport is well connected to Bath by a direct bus, the A4 Air Decker. Timetables and route information can be found here.
The London based airports are also connected to Bath by coach or train. 

Walking in Bath

If you are a true Lizzy Bennet and wish to avoid these new fangled horseless carriages, luckily for you Bath is a very walkable city. Most events are within a 15 minutes walk of the Jane Austen Centre, if they are not it is noted on the event description. 

Each ticket confirmation email will contain a direct What3Words link which will take you to to venue location or meeting point for that event. If you are new to Bath we reccommend downloading the What3Words app to enable you to navigate using those ticket confirmation links. 

Bath being the beautiful stone city it is has unpredictable phone signal, so it is also highly recommended to download an offline map of Bath from Google maps. Instructions on how to do this can be found here.

Taxi

For those wishing to experience a sedan chair style of travel, a list of taxi rank locations and companies to contact can be found here.
A word to the wise, by the time you have promenaded to a taxi rank, you probably could have promenaded home!