Bath Christmas Market 2022

I spent the first few days of this week visiting with a friend including a day trip to Bath’s Christmas market. We had been before, a few years before COVID, but only spent a limited time there so on this trip we wanted to get there early and enjoy a full-ish day making a dint in our Christmas shopping. It was easier to drive rather than take the train, particularly with the train strikes and we knew that Bath has a very efficient Park and Ride system, with several sites available around the city. Parking is free, you just pay for the bus ticket (we paid £5.40 for two adults, other combinations of fares are available) and the buses are regular and take about 10 minutes. The weather was extremely foggy which, while making for a slightly eventful drive home, also made for some atmospheric photos, especially later on in the day when the lights started to come on.

There are 170 wooden chalets this year spread out across the city, each uniquely decorated and adorned with fairy lights. The majority are local to the south west of England, with quite a few also having physical stores in Bath. Lots of food and drink stalls of course but also many wonderful hand made products which makes it a great place to find some unusual gifts and to support local people rather than corporations.

I won’t say which of us bought what from where in case the recipients are reading this, but some of our favourite stallholders included Flapjackery, Amica Felt and Zoe Rose Art. We also visited some of the shops in Bath around the market which are still open for business as usual and many are beautifully decorated for Christmas.

We definitely didn’t visit all the stalls but we enjoyed wandering around and exploring and had a wonderful lunch at The Salamander pub to break up the day. It’s certainly a good day out and visiting on a Tuesday meant it was busy but not too overwhelmingly crowded. The market is on until 11 December so still plenty of time to pay a visit yourself. You can find more pictures here.