Discover the locations of Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion, and walk in the footsteps of the author and her heroine Anne Elliot. This self-guided walking tour is for fans of Jane Austen and Persuasion. If you haven’t read the book yet, be warned: I discuss the sights on the walk with reference to the plot and excerpts from the novel. There will be spoilers.

Introduction: Discovering the Bath of Persuasion

She disliked Bath, and did not think it agreed with her – and Bath was to be her home (Chapter 2)

Georgian Bath was designed for promenading and enjoying elegant vistas, and even today it’s easy to feel the spirit of those times. This walk will show you the best of Bath at the same time as following the routes so well-trodden by Jane Austen and the characters of Persuasion.

This walking tour is based on Austen’s novel rather than screen adaptations of Persuasion. However, as TV and film adaptions have featured several of the author’s original settings, you will also see some film locations along the way.

Persuasion is very rooted in Bath physically, and Jane Austen locates her scenes and characters with precision in the geographic backdrop she knew well. The characters’ movements about the city make sense to readers who know Bath, and add verisimilitude to the story for readers. The section of the novel set in Bath is about people and their interactions with their society, both in its social rules and its setting: the solid fabric of the city. Bath becomes part of the story, keeping characters apart, enabling their growth and ultimately bringing them together.

Persuasion walk directions

About this Persuasion walk: practicalities

This Persuasion walk begins at Pulteney Bridge and finishes at the Royal Crescent, linking two of Bath’s most famous landmarks through a looping literary route. The self-guided tour takes around an hour and a half, though if you are pausing to read, take photos and enjoy Bath’s atmosphere, you should allow longer. There’s a significant up and down hill, all on roads. I’d recommend taking water and wearing comfortable shoes.

Walk Section 1: Pulteney Bridge to the Pump Room

This walking tour begins at one of Bath’s great landmarks, Pulteney Bridge. Lined with pretty shops and cafés, the bridge was built between 1769 and 1774, so it was already a couple of decades old when Austen lived in Bath.

Head away from the centre of town and walk along the short Argyle Street towards Laura Place. Take a circuit around the square before returning to Argyle Street and retracing your steps over Pulteney Bridge.

Laura Place, a grand square with a fountain at its heart, is the Bath base of Lady Dalrymple, a relative of the Elliot family, in Persuasion.

Lady Dalrymple had taken a house, for three months, in Laura Place, and would be living in style.

The family connection to this prestigious address becomes one of Sir Walter Elliot’s boasts.

They visited in Laura Place, they had the cards of Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and the Honourable Miss Carteret, to be arranged wherever they might be most visible: and “Our cousins in Laura Place,”—“Our cousin, Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret,” were talked of to everybody.

This architectural showpiece was the start of a large and costly development of stately townhouses, the Bathwick Estate. Intended as a large and impressive New Town, the project was never completed. As you walk around Laura Place you will see how one of its side streets stops abruptly after a few houses.

Looking down the length of Great Pulteney Street, the centrepiece for the Bathwick Estate, you can appreciate the ambitious scale of this development. At the far end is the Holburne Museum, once the Sydney Hotel and part of the pleasure grounds of Sydney Gardens, where Jane Austen enjoyed fireworks as well as daytime walks. Although not included in this walk, you may wish to visit the gardens during your visit to Bath; they’ve recently been restored and make a good place to wander or picnic.

Great Pulteney Street (or just Pulteney Street) is where Catherine Morland stays in Northanger Abbey. And in Persuasion this is where Anne manages to catch sight of Captain Wentworth.

At last, in returning down Pulteney Street, she distinguished him on the right hand pavement at such a distance as to have him in view the greater part of the street. There were many other men about him, many groups walking the same way, but there was no mistaking him.

Perhaps Anne and Lady Russell are returning from a visit to Sydney Gardens. Jane Austen lived for a time in Sydney Place, at the far end of Great Pulteney Street, so she would have been very familiar with this stretch of street and must have walked this way often to reach the town centre.

Look out for the Victorian post box on Laura Place (interesting, though later than Austen’s novel) and the historic facades of the Boater pub and the pharmacy at the corner of Argyle Street. This row dates to c. 1789, (albeit with later alterations), and so Anne and Austen would have passed the same buildings we see now. Number 9 (The Boater) was already the Argyle Tap, run by Bath Brewery Co. in 1809, before Persuasion takes place, and the pub’s bow front is also early 19th century.

Cross Pulteney Bridge, and then turn left, enjoying the view back towards the bridge over the stone balustrade. Continue along this pavement to the open space of the Orange Grove, turn right over the road crossing and walk up to the Abbey, heading around its right-hand side to reach the front of the building in Abbey Churchyard.

Along the southern side of the square is the Grand Pump Room, part of a complex which dates to many eras and includes the Roman Baths. The Pump Room was built between 1790 and 1795. Inside the complex you can now tour the Roman Baths Museum or enjoy tea or lunch in the Pump Room – it’s really worth taking a look inside. Georgian visitors would come here to ‘take the waters’ and to socialise. Warm and mineral-filled, the waters are not very pleasant to taste, but you can still sample them at the exit to the Roman Baths and at a historic fountain in the Pump Room. If you want to enjoy an authentic Georgian Bath experience, you ought to have a taste (though upon sipping, you may feel ‘enjoy’ is the wrong word).

Fashionable visitors in Bath’s heyday, including the characters from Persuasion, could have strolled here in the morning, sipped the waters and met up with friends. This was a good place to display yourself and your latest outfits, and to see who else was in town. A promenade around the streets, and a visit to the shops, a circulating library or a coffee house would also be a part of the day’s routine. Evenings could be spent quietly at home, or given over to pleasure with a public ball or concert at the Assembly Rooms, a trip to the pleasure gardens, or attending a private party or dinner.

Walk Section 2. Pump Room to Old Bond Street

Turning your back on the Abbey, cross under the colonnade which separates the other end of the churchyard from the shopping street beyond. Part of the same development as the Pump Room, this colonnade dates to 1791, and makes an appearance in Persuasion.

Diagonally across to the right, on the corner, is the site of the White Hart. If you cross the wide pedestrian thoroughfare and head up to the building, now a Costa Coffee, you can find a plaque on the wall of their outdoor seating area which commemorates the White Hart hotel that once stood here.

It’s at the White Hart that Anne visits her friends the Musgroves. Her sister Mary enjoys people-watching from ‘her station at a window overlooking the entrance to the Pump Room’. It’s from this vantage point that Mary sees Mrs Clay standing under the colonnade with Mr Elliot, an assignation which arouses some speculation.

‘Anne,’ cried Mary, still at her window, ‘there is Mrs Clay, I am sure, standing under the colonnade, and a gentleman with her. I saw them turn the corner from Bath-street just now. They seem deep in talk. Who is it?’

A couple of key scenes take place at the White Hart. Although our walk doesn’t follow the characters now, it’s from the White Hart that Anne sets off with Charles near the end of the novel, heading up Union Street towards her home on Camden Place. They have only walked a short distance uphill from the inn, on today’s shopping thoroughfare, when Captain Wentworth joins them. He and Anne are desperate to be alone together, and the oblivious Charles suggests Wentworth’s escort for Anne and heads off happily to his gun-dealer.

For now, though, we return to the earlier stages of the novel. Head back downhill passing the colonnade – peopled with the ghosts of Persuasion‘s characters – and then take the first right, along the colonnaded Bath Street. Jane Austen shopped on Bath Street, and scenes from the 1995 BBC Persuasion (the kiss scene), the 2007 version and the 2022 Netflix movie were shot here.

At the end of the street is the small and pretty Cross Bath, which you can usually look into. Anne’s impoverished friend Mrs Smith, who plays an important part in the development of the plot of the novel, may have come here or the Hetling Pump Room over the road seeking the health benefits from the hot waters.

   She was a widow, and poor. Her husband had been extravagant; and at his death, about two years before, had left his affairs dreadfully involved. She had had difficulties of every sort to contend with, and in addition to these distresses had been afflicted with a severe rheumatic fever, which, finally settling in her legs, had made her for the present a cripple. She had come to Bath on that account, and was now in lodgings near the hot baths, living in a very humble way, unable even to afford herself the comfort of a servant, and of course almost excluded from society…

Her accommodations were limited to a noisy parlour, and a dark bedroom behind, with no possibility of moving from one to the other without assistance, which there was only one servant in the house to afford, and she never quitted the house but to be conveyed into the warm bath.

Take the alley on the left of the Cross Bath to Westgate Buildings. This less elegant area, which still had shades of its medieval past, is where Mrs Smith lodged, to Sir Walter’s distaste.

‘Westgate-buildings!’ said he; ‘and who is Miss Anne Elliot to be visiting in Westgate-buildings?’ …

‘Westgate-buildings must have been rather surprised by the appearance of a carriage drawn up near its pavement,’ observed Sir Walter. …

‘A widow Mrs Smith lodging in Westgate-buildings! A poor widow barely able to live, between thirty and forty; a mere Mrs Smith, an every-day Mrs Smith, of all people and all names in the world, to be the chosen friend of Miss Anne Elliot, and to be preferred by her to her own family connections among the nobility of England and Ireland! Mrs Smith! Such a name!’

The street was damaged in WW2 bombing and buildings have changed, but you can still see parts of the St John’s Hospital building. This area would have been a very practical place to stay for an invalid – just a few yards from the hot medicinal baths where Mrs Smith would receive treatment, as well as in a central and relatively flat part of the city.

By Chapter 21, when Anne pays a visit to Westgate Buildings, her romantic hopes have been raised and she is filled with a certainty, at least, of her own heart. Perhaps there’s a hint in these words that Austen feels Bath could do with some improvements.

Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy, could never have passed along the streets of Bath, than Anne was sporting with from Camden-place to Westgate-buildings. It was almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way.

Turn right and continue over a crossroads, following Sawclose uphill, passing the Theatre Royal on your left. The Theatre Royal was built between 1802 and 1805, so Jane Austen may have seen the building under construction. There were a couple of theatres in Bath at the time of Persuasion, but given its proximity to the White Hart this may be the one which Charles boasts of visiting to procure a box for the family to see a play. Austen and her family frequented the Old Theatre Royal, in Orchard Street, which closed in 1805; a building which had a varied post-theatre existence and can be visited today on tours or for events.

Just after the theatre, turn right along Upper Borough Walls. Take a left at a coffee shop onto Old Bond Street. You’re back on Bath’s main central shopping route now. There are some charming historic shopfronts here, and one of these was used in the filming of the 1995 Persuasion. I’m almost totally certain that the coffee shop scene where Anne has a momentous encounter with Captain Wentworth was filmed in the shop which at the time of writing is a branch of Jigsaw.

Walk Section 3. Milsom Street to Camden Crescent

Continue up Milsom Street, which has been Bath’s fashionable shopping street for centuries. Just after you cross Quiet Street at the bottom, look at the second shop on the left. Assuming that street numbering has remained the same, this was the actual site of Molland’s, an important location in Persuasion. Located at 2, Milsom Street, Mollands was a real-life confectionary shop where Jane Austen had Anne meet Captain Wentworth one rainy day. I love that the 1995 film used a location so very near to the original. Recently the premises has been occupied by a very expensive chocolate shop, which is also a pleasing echo of Austen’s Bath.

They were in Milsom Street. It began to rain, not much, but enough to make shelter desirable for women, and quite enough to make it very desirable for Miss Elliot to have the advantage of being conveyed home in Lady Dalrymple’s carriage, which was seen waiting at a little distance; she, Anne, and Mrs Clay, therefore, turned into Molland’s, while Mr Elliot stepped to Lady Dalrymple, to request her assistance.

This is a good spot for people watching, as everyone promenading or running errands through town would be likely to pass down Milsom Street.

Anne, as she sat near the window, descried, most decidedly and distinctly, Captain Wentworth walking down the street.

Anne’s encounter with Captain Wentworth in this scene, while other characters bustle to and fro, is one of the key scenes of the novel. To his concern that she is being left behind by her relatives in the rain, she tells him ‘I walk: I prefer walking.’ These may be inspiring words for those of us following in her footsteps, and are also a case of Anne asserting her independence. His assistance is unnecessary, either way; Anne’s inconvenient cousin Mr Elliot arrives to escort her home on foot, a route we’re about to follow.

Anne would have been particularly obliged to her cousin, if he would have walked by her side all the way to Camden Place, without saying a word. She had never found it so difficult to listen to him …

Walk all the way up Milsom Street. On the way you’ll pass chain bookshop Waterstones, which houses not only three floors of books but also a first-floor café with views over the street; one of many potential refreshment breaks on this walk.

On the far side of Milsom Street at number 43 you can see one of Bath’s most notable ‘ghost signs’. The painted advert for a circulating library and reading room still recalls Bath’s bookish past. Ladies visiting Bath, like Lady Russell and Anne, would have been likely to include a circulating library on their regular outings.

On one fortunate day Anne meets Admiral Croft, Captain Wentworth’s brother-in-law, here in Milsom Street, having left Lady Russell’s carriage “in the lower part of town”. She has previously observed the Crofts walking around the centre, so her keenness to take the long uphill walk home alone that day might have had something to do with her hopes for a gently-engineered encounter to ask for news.

… in walking up Milsom-street she had the good fortune to meet with the Admiral. He was standing by himself, at a printshop window…

Once Anne has attracted the Admiral’s attention, he asks if he can help and she boldly asks him to walk with her on her way home.

At the top of Milsom Street, turn right, crossing the street, and continue a few yards to use the pedestrian crossing over George Street. From here continue straight up, taking Bartlett Street.

This would likely have been one of the routes used frequently by Anne on her walks between the town centre and her Bath home, the Elliot’s rented house. Readers new to the city will begin understand the energy required to traverse hilly Bath on foot. ‘A toilsome walk’, it’s described as at one point when Anne’s spirits are agitated. I think the physical health fostered by her walking is another aspect of the independence and strength Anne acquires during the novel. Jane Austen herself was in declining health as she wrote Persuasion, and maybe she was remembering her more energetic times in Bath.

Turn right on Alfred Street then left up the hill. Over the road, etched into a building you can see the place name Belmont. Close to the end of Persuasion, Charles, oblivious to the fact Captain Wentworth would walk anywhere with Anne, asks a favour of his acquaintance.

“Captain Wentworth, which way are you going? Only to Gay Street, or farther up the town?”

“I hardly know,” replied Captain Wentworth, surprised.

“Are you going as high as Belmont? Are you going near Camden Place? Because, if you are, I shall have no scruple in asking you to take my place, and give Anne your arm to her father’s door. She is rather done for this morning, and must not go so far without help …

Earlier in the story’s timeline, during her information-gathering walk with the Admiral, Anne has to listen to his chatter all the way uphill from Milsom Street before she can begin to hear the news (gossip) she craves.

When they were got a little farther, Anne ventured to press again for what he had to communicate. She hoped when clear of Milsom Street to have her curiosity gratified; but she was still obliged to wait, for the Admiral had made up his mind not to begin till they had gained the greater space and quiet of Belmont; and as she was not really Mrs Croft, she must let him have his own way. As soon as they were fairly ascending Belmont, he began—

Cross at the pedestrian crossing and continue uphill. As well as attractive and interesting Georgian buildings, you’ll pass the entrance to Hedgemead Park, which was created in the 1880s after a series of landslips made it unsafe to continue rebuilding houses here. The park runs along the slope and is a pleasant place to take a break.

When Lansdown Road bends left, turn right onto Camden Crescent and walk along to the handsomely curved terrace. Camden Crescent, then Camden Place, is where the Elliots, in their half-hearted attempts at retrenchment, have rented a house.

Sir Walter had taken a very good house in Camden Place, a lofty dignified situation, such as becomes a man of consequence; and both he and Elizabeth were settled there, much to their satisfaction.

One of the famous crescents of Bath, Camden Crescent is elegant and imposing, in an airy setting with views over the city and hills. It also had a more dramatic genesis than Bath’s other crescents: a landslip at the far end meant the terrace of houses was never completed symmetrically as planned. There were originally supposed to be 32 houses, 22 in the crescent and 5 in each wing. I have wondered whether Austen pictured the Elliots as lodging in the sloping terrace on the left of the Crescent or the Crescent itself. If the side wing, this may be another nudge that they can’t quite afford the best that they feel they deserve. It’s possible that the incomplete Crescent and geologically unstable ground underfoot played into Austen’s choice of this location for her unreliable and hard-up baronet.

Camden Crescent was clearly a desirable place to stay, as Sir Walter and Elizabeth claim. But, as you’ve seen from the walk here, Camden Crescent was geographically on the periphery of fashionable Bath, and not ideally placed for easy enjoyment of the pleasures of Bath life, for calling on friends or being called upon. The contrast between this setting and the centrally-located grandeur of Laura Place, where we started this walk, illustrates the status and finances of the Elliots as compared to their rich relatives the Dalrymples. It’s easy to see, though, how the imposing houses of the Crescent and its views looking down over Bath may have pleased Sir Walter and Miss Elliot’s needs to feel their superiority.

They had the pleasure of assuring her that Bath more than answered their expectations in every respect. Their house was undoubtedly the best in Camden Place; their drawing-rooms had many decided advantages over all the others which they had either seen or heard of, and the superiority was not less in the style of the fitting-up, or the taste of the furniture. Their acquaintance was exceedingly sought after.

Walk Section 4. Camden Crescent to the Royal Crescent

Continue by tracing a walk Anne will have trodden frequently. Head back out onto Lansdown Hill and cross carefully. Take Morford Street, which is almost opposite and walk downhill. At the bottom of the street, turn left and then cross the road to take the right turn, Rivers Street.

Rivers Street is where Anne’s friend and her nearest thing to a maternal figure Lady Russell has taken a house. Although she takes Anne around in her carriage, it seems safe to assume that a lot of social comings and goings between the two houses may have been on foot. The proximity of her friend is one of the few congenial aspects of life in Bath for Anne, and it is certainly convenient for lifts as well as socialising.

She was put down in Camden Place; and Lady Russell then drove to her own lodgings, in Rivers Street.

Anne would be taking this walk between Camden Crescent and Rivers Street, or a route very close to it, quite often. In Chapter 22, the climactic walk towards a resolution begins with these streets.

Miss Elliot was to have the honour of calling on Mrs Musgrove in the course of the morning, and Anne walked off with Charles and Mary, to go and see her and Henrietta directly.

Her plan of sitting with Lady Russell must give way for the present. They all three called in Rivers-street for a couple of minutes; but Anne convinced herself that a day’s delay of the intended communication could be of no consequence, and hastened forward to the White Hart, to see again the friends and companions of the last autumn …

After admiring the view along Rivers Street, take the first turn left, down Russell Street. It’s hard not to speculate that Austen may have taken a character’s name from a street she’d pass frequently. The road at the foot of this street is Bennett Street; which other than the spelling is of course another famous Austen surname.

Across Bennett Street is the Assembly Rooms, one of the key Persuasion locations in Bath and one of the most important buildings in Georgian Bath. Walk to the right and cross Bennett Street to approach the front entrance to the Assembly Rooms. At the time of writing the site is being renovated by the National Trust, but will be open again – check their website for details: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/bath-bristol/bath-assembly-rooms.

The Assembly Rooms is the backdrop to one of my favourite scenes in Persuasion. Attending a musical concert, Anne longs to communicate further with Captain Wentworth after an initial, encouraging conversation in the Octagon Room is cut short. Conveniently seated at the end of a bench, she hopes he will sit with her, and wonders why he has grown distant again over the course of the evening – only to be frustrated when her attention is claimed by her cousin, the over-attentive Mr Elliot. Captain Wentworth leaves in an uncharacteristically dramatic mood

… She found herself accosted by Captain Wentworth, in a reserved yet hurried sort of farewell. “He must wish her good night; he was going; he should get home as fast as he could.”

“Is not this song worth staying for?” said Anne, suddenly struck by an idea which made her yet more anxious to be encouraging.

“No!” he replied impressively, “there is nothing worth my staying for;” and he was gone directly.

Emotionally confusing and entirely relatable in any century, their encounter leaves Anne both wildly hopeful and desperately anxious.

Jealousy of Mr Elliot! It was the only intelligible motive. Captain Wentworth jealous of her affection! Could she have believed it a week ago; three hours ago! For a moment the gratification was exquisite. But, alas! there were very different thoughts to succeed. How was such jealousy to be quieted? How was the truth to reach him? How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn of her real sentiments? It was misery to think of Mr Elliot’s attentions. Their evil was incalculable.

After visiting the Assembly Rooms, walk the few yards back on to Bennett Street and turn left. You’ll emerge almost at once in the Circus, one of Georgian Bath’s greatest showpieces. Walk around the Circus to your left. Glance down into the courtyards of the garden flats and in one building’s windows you may see a creepy array of dolls.

Take the first left and walk down Gay Street. This is both a real and a ghost location for Persuasion. The street is mentioned several times in the novel. Admiral and Mrs Croft are lodging on Gay Street, and presumably Captain Wentworth is staying with his sister and brother-in-law.

Sir Walter, so scornful of Mrs Smith’s location in Westgate Buildings, has no objection to the Crofts’ situation on Gay Street, after enquiring ‘whether they were likely to be situated in such a part of Bath as it might suit Miss Elliott and himself to visit in’:

The Crofts had placed themselves in lodgings in Gay-street, perfectly to Sir Walter’s satisfaction. He was not at all ashamed of the acquaintance …

While the street doesn’t make an ‘in-person’ appearance in the published novel, an earlier unpublished version of the ‘resolution’ chapter takes place in the Crofts’ house on Gay Street. Jane Austen herself lodged here in 1805, at 25 Gay Street, with her mother and sister. You can find the Jane Austen Centre with its museum and tea room further down the street.

Our walking route descends the whole length of Gay Street to take a look at the handsome Queen Square (if you are tired, take a shortcut down the first right on Gay Street, Queen’s Parade Place, to skip the square). Queen Square is another location where Jane Austen herself stayed, in 1799, at number 13 on the southern side of the square. She may have been thinking of this when she wrote the Musgrove sisters’ strictures:

“I hope we shall be in Bath in the winter; but remember, papa, if we do go, we must be in a good situation: none of your Queen Squares for us!

Turning right from Gay Street, walk along the north side of Queen Square, then turn right up Queen’s Parade. At the top of this small triangle, cross Queen’s Parade Place diagonally to the right and climb the short flight of steps onto Gravel Walk (for a step-free alternative, follow Royal Avenue instead).

Gravel Walk, an unassuming pedestrian pathway connecting Queen’s Square with the Royal Crescent, was laid out in 1771, and runs behind the gardens of the tall Georgian terraces of the Circus and Brock Street. There were fields alongside in those early years, and although this was a popular walking route, it must still have offered peace and privacy compared to Bath’s busy streets overlooked by windows and carriages.

It’s not by random chance that Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth find their steps heading this way as they resolve their differences. The nature of Gravel Walk, then as now, would have made it a setting ideally suited to a discreetly romantic stroll and a sharing of confidences. As Jane Austen knew Bath well, her choice of location for this important scene would have been carefully considered. Maybe this was a walk she herself favoured, where she could feel closer to the rural and village life she missed.

… Soon words enough had passed between them to decide their direction towards the comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk, where the power of conversation would make the present hour a blessing indeed, and prepare it for all the immortality which the happiest recollections of their own future lives could bestow. There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other’s character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting. And there, as they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling housekeepers, flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in those retrospections and acknowledgements, and especially in those explanations of what had directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest. All the little variations of the last week were gone through; and of yesterday and to-day there could scarcely be an end.

The Netflix film adaptation of Persuasion may have ignored historical and literary faithfulness, but in this it was true to the book; the big ‘kiss’ scene was shot here, behind tall privacy screens.

Gravel Walk opens out onto the green park lawns in front of the Royal Crescent. Turn right up to the Crescent to complete this walking tour. The Netflix movie set the Elliot’s house here on the Royal Crescent and also filmed an outdoor scene in front of No.1 Royal Crescent (I watched this being filmed – read about the filming of the Netflix Persuasion). No. 1 Royal Crescent, a backdrop to the Netflix filming, is a Georgian house museum, and you may find special Austen-themed exhibitions or tours.

The walk ends here. You may wish to picnic in the park, or pay a visit to No. 1 Royal Crescent. To return to the town centre from the Royal Crescent, walk along Brock Street, to your right as you face the Crescent. This brings you back to the Circus. Head to your right down Gay Street again, and turn left at the junction with George Street. From George Street turn right down Milsom Street, which will lead you back to the centre of Bath and its main shopping streets.

A romantic alternative: a shorter ‘happy ending’ walk

Persuasion essentially ends with a journey through Bath (before a party and a summing-up). Chapter 23 is an eventful chapter, with a number of visits and revelations. If you would like to skip the extra locations from the novel which are included in my longer walk above, you could follow this abbreviated version which adapts the later stages of my walk. This shorter route traces Anne’s steps on that fateful day when her future takes shape. Carry the novel with you and walk with Anne into hard-earned joy.

Begin by walking or catching a bus to Camden Crescent. From her family’s rented house here, Anne intends to head to the White Hart to be with the Musgroves, postponing a visit to Lady Russell in Rivers Street. Fitting in with her earlier habit of walking around Bath, there doesn’t appear to be any question of taking a carriage or sedan chair. Maybe none is available to her for solo outings or maybe she doesn’t want to be observed or accountable. It’s raining (this is a recurring theme, maybe reflecting Austen’s memories of the city), and Anne waits for an improvement in the weather ‘before she was able to attempt the walk’. Finally, once the weather has cleared, she heads down to the White Hart to see the Musgroves.

At the White Hart, opinions and truths are shared and Captain Wentworth is moved to write his letter to Anne before fleeing. Filled with joy and impatience, she is desperate to answer his entreaties. Not for the first time in the novel, she tries to shake off would-be escorts and Mrs Musgrove’s well-meaning urging to take a chair as Anne ‘must not walk’. Austen pauses for some wry humour.

But the chair would never do. Worse than all! To lose the possibility of speaking two words to Captain Wentworth in the course of her quiet, solitary progress up the town (and she felt almost certain of meeting him) could not be borne. The chair was earnestly protested against, and Mrs Musgrove, who thought only of one sort of illness, having assured herself with some anxiety, that there had been no fall in the case; that Anne had not at any time lately slipped down, and got a blow on her head; that she was perfectly convinced of having had no fall; could part with her cheerfully, and depend on finding her better at night.

Again Anne finds herself with an unwanted escort as she leaves the White Hart and starts to walk uphill, ostensibly heading home but really hoping to encounter Captain Wentworth.

Another momentary vexation occurred. Charles, in his real concern and good nature, would go home with her; there was no preventing him. This was almost cruel. But she could not be long ungrateful; he was sacrificing an engagement at a gunsmith’s, to be of use to her; and she set off with him, with no feeling but gratitude apparent.

Austen’s tying of her narrative’s events with real-life settings is emphatic here, adding to the grounding realism of her story-telling.

They were in Union-street, when a quicker step behind, a something of familiar sound, gave her two moments preparation for the sight of Captain Wentworth. He joined them …

In half a minute, Charles was at the bottom of Union-street again, and the other two proceeding together

In the secluded Gravel Walk they mark out the moments and locations of the misunderstandings, hopes and despair of their time in Bath. His jealousy of Mr Elliot ‘that had begun to operate in the very hour of first meeting her in Bath’.

Their first meeting in Milsom Street afforded much to be said, but the concert still more. That evening seemed to be made up of exquisite moments. The moment of her stepping forward in the Octagon Room to speak to him: the moment of Mr Elliot’s appearing and tearing her away, and one or two subsequent moments, marked by returning hope or increasing despondency, were dwelt on with energy.

Back at Camden Place, Anne is ‘at home again, and happier than any one in that house could have conceived’. The card party that evening sees the drawing rooms illuminated and Anne filled with good humour towards everyone. All that remains is for a chapter tying up loose ends, dealing with villains and assuring the reader of the future happiness of Austen’s protagonists.

Further reading

• Jane Austen and Bath
• Persuasion (BBC 1995) filming locations
• Persuasion (Netflix) Bath filming
• A Bridgerton break in Bath – my tips for enjoying Bath’s civilised charms are also applicable to Austen and Persuasion fans, from afternoon tea to ribbon-shopping