'And what would Sir like next? Another four-handed massage or a selection of cream cakes?' Not an easy decision for someone who has been ordered to leave work and home for a day or two to retreat and eat. On the one hand there is warm oil of rose and ylang-ylang and two pairs of firm but gentle hands, (male, female, the choice is mine) on the other a pot of jasmine tea, warm scones and clotted cream. Maybe even an eclair. 'Or perhaps Sir would like another dip in the pool, it's a warm 37°c and you will be met at the other end with a deep pile robe and slippers.'

Leave Paddington on the Penzance train before 8am and a tired and grumpy cookery writer can be in front of the Pump Room in Bath in time for morning coffee. If you travel first class (look, I've been working very, very hard recently) you can take breakfast on the train, which means, to me at least, warm toast, little pots of marmalade and hot coffee but, and this is the important bit, all made by someone else. (Anyone who gets their own and their family's breakfast every sodding day except Valentine's day will get my drift.)

I have come to Bath in search of some 'restoration', both physical and gastronomic. You know the routine I'm after, sleep, massage, swim, eat, massage, eat, swim, sleep. I suppose I want both bath and buns. My belief in the restorative effect of water, steam and massage is second only to my soft spot for a teacake, especially the sort you can split, toast and slather with butter. To be honest, I had intended to turn up with my suitcase and bad temper at the Chiva-Som in Thailand, a health resort of the more sybaritic kind where you bathe in deep pools filled with lotus blossom and drink papaya juice for breakfast. But then a friend whispered to me that the said Chiva-Som was 'dry'. The shame of being caught smuggling a bottle into my room was too much. I might as well have gone to the Priory. A few days in the South West will have to do instead. In this part of the country you can have the lot, pampering yourself into oblivion with holistic therapy, booze and cholesterol. Try to find a cream tea in Thailand.

Now, the true Bath bun is soft, like a marriage between a brioche and an Easter hot-cross, but encrusted with currants and gritty nibs of sugar. As buns go, it is not bad if you can track down the real thing. Most bearing the name are not worthy of it, being dry and yellow inside without a hint of spice. Bun after bun ends up as pigeon fodder. But the real thing is there if you know where to look. Mountsteven's, an unattractive modern baker's shop in Lower Borough Walls makes the best. 'They're really good today,' said the counter assistant with a wink to the local woman next to me. I guess she can tell a tourist a mile off. As it happens, she's right on both counts.

An eighteenth-century version of this bun was scented with caraway, a habit that seemed to slip away over the next 100 years or so. I'm not bothered, I like traditional recipes to stay that way but caraway is a take-it-or-leave-it flavour in my book. As it happens the modern bun is soft and sweet, lighter than I expected and, according to the holders of the recipe in the Mountstevens shop who will not divulge it, flavoured with lemon juice and mixed spice. Even so, I can't help wondering how any piece of confectionery can survive in today's world when it is crowned with half a pound of crushed sugar lumps.

Buns, butter, it's a small step to cheese. Bath once again has its own, the original 'soft, creamy cheese' having been extinct for a generation. And what's more, it now has two cheese shops worth a detour on anybody's away-day ticket. The local branch of Paxton and Whitfield in John Street has a selection of the new breed of cheeses, Bath Blue, Claverons and Kelston Park made by Graham Padfield at Park Farm in nearby Kelston. Those who like their cheese mild, buttery and brie-like should head for this southwestern branch of the esteemed Jermyn Street shop. Wild and erotic these cheeses are not; in fact there is something rather restrained and elegant about the cheeses, as somehow befits the location. I am not sure I'd exactly join a queue for them but I certainly enjoyed mine with some nutty bread and a bag of plums as a late summer picnic in the park opposite the city's famous crescent. I will try the blue one again, with the first of the Comice pears when they turn up.

I can no more pass a cheese shop than most friends of mine can walk past the windows at Manolo Blahnik. To me dairy produce equals pampering. Eating cheese is the adult version of breast feeding. It is not an addiction, it is simply that good cheese is as high on my list of basics for a decent life as good bread, strong coffee and leafy green salad. The other gem of a cheesemonger is the Fine Cheese Company in Walcott Street which offers platters of Sharpham, Appleby's Cheshire, Montgomery's Cheddar, a fine chalky goat and a basket of well-made bread. I could have had any of the sliced hams too, or their French plate with quince paste.

At this point you should, really, do something more energetic than walking along the well trodden visitor-to-the-famous-city route. However, if there is anyone from Bath's Royal Parks Committee reading this I would like to offer a word of advice. Lose the tortured floral displays. The long sloping lawns and misty views across the city are tourist fodder enough. Those overflowing pots of red and mauve bizzy-lizzies on stilts in Victoria Park really have to go. I could barely sleep knowing they were there. I was half hoping that someone, having a bit of late-night how's-your-father in the park might have rolled over (or more likely lost their balance) and crushed them. Alas they were still there the next morning in all their flaming scarlet glory.

But whichever way you walk round Bath, all roads seem to lead to Sally Lunn's Teashop. It is as if the Huguenot baker herself, if that is what she really was, is still here, a siren wooing hardened dieters toward her rock cakes. Sally Lunn's buns are perhaps not as well known as Bakewell tart, Richmond maids of honour and Eccles cakes but that is because they never appear outside their home town. Despite being as soft, warm and comforting as a nanny's bosom they have never been copied the way a Yorkshire teacake has.

Hot from the toaster and spread with butter or lemon curd, or raspberry jam or chocolate butter made with Cadbury's Flake (no, I didn't) they are as fine as any of this country's traditional baking. For the record I fell for warm orange curd on mine, hot and dribbling down the sides. Shoe-horned into a table by the mock log fire and nannied by Lunn's ladies I could have stayed there all day.

But work calls and there is lunch to be found. Bath spoils the hungry; there is something worth eating on almost every corner. And so there should be; it was in Bath that this country's eating-out culture really began. Prior to George Perry-Smith setting up his Hole in the Wall in George Street in the 1970s there was little reason to eat out purely for the food. You had to have a reason - a family celebration for instance - in order to go out for dinner. Eating out just for the hell of it was (almost) unheard of. The food of the time - say, Crab tart, Salmon with dill or currants and Ginger and St Emilion au Chocolat(a devastating dessert of macaroons and chocolate) - seemed shockingly new and decadent. Even today there are more than a few good places here to draw up a chair. And that's not even waxing lyrical about the sausages from the excellent Sausage Shop; hand-made, gorgeous and surprisingly colourful considering they are made only of pig and pig skin, luckily a huge selection can be acquired through mail order.

Now I have something to admit. I ate two lunches in Bath in one day. I call it research. One at about 12 midday and the other late, after 2.30. Despite their springing up like mushrooms in a meadow I have never never eaten at any branch of the Loch Fyne Restaurant chain other than the long established original, in er, Loch Fyne. In Bath, the famed oyster company have managed a first, in that it got to convert a city centre high-ceilinged bank before All Bar One got to it. If this is the acceptable face of chain restaurants then I am all for it. I couldn't help but appreciate the straightforwardness of the place, a bright airy room which, unlike its rival chain Fish!, doesn't smell of deep-fat frying.

Mounds of oysters, long sides of smoked salmon and busy chefs cooking right in front of you are assurance enough of simple stuff done well. There was nothing fancy about my plate of four different salmons - when pleasuring oneself isn't about dairy products it's about smoked salmon and oysters - Bradan Orach, their strongly smoked variety; a slice of their lighter traditional cure; a generous wodge of Bradan Rost, (fish that has been roasted in the smoke kiln) and a slice of gravalax. I could have had smoked haddock poached in milk, turbot with shellfish sauce or one of their mussel pots with chilli and coriander. Instead I had a plate of Loch Fyne oysters. With the bread - I wolfed the entire basket - this should have been enough for anyone.

And it would have been had I not stumbled across both the Fish Works shop, and The Seafood Café in Green Street, a stonking good fish shop with a café attached. So what started as me admiring (actually taking a deep, exaggerated bow to) a fish counter so obviously put together by someone who loves the stuff ended up as a second lunch. First the fish counter: snow-white hake from Newlyn, line-caught wild sea bass from Dartmouth, River Fowey oysters and mussels from the River Fowey and some stunning local turbot. There's Elizabeth David's taramasalata and dumpy, crisp and filling fish cakes.

Despite the fact that my poached halibut was actually grilled (tinkering chefs - don't you just hate them) and someone had a heavy hand with the garlic, it was as good a casual lunch as you could wish for. You may end up wanting to slap the owner though. After a polite inquiry about whether the tarama was made on the premises he stood on a stool and wrote 'Home Made' in big letters on the blackboard, then proceeded to loudly recommend the 'Home Made' tarama to everyone who walked through the door. It must be such hard work having to be so nice to tourists all day.

Bath has long been somewhere to right your wrongs. As far back as 850BC the local mud was said to cure scurvy and even leprosy. The Celts worshipped the hot springs here and by the year 60AD the Romans had arrived and were in the process of building the city's famous baths. Some of which we can now queue to see, filing along inch by inch, but much of which is still hidden two metres below the city's Georgian architecture.

You can, of course, join the throng at the municipal swimming baths but a far better idea is to fall into the Bath House at the Royal Crescent. It may not actually say it is a hotel, but take it from me, it is. A fine one too with its exquisitely restored drawing rooms and bespoke beds. The spa is at the end of the garden, where, if you can find a waiter capable of boiling a kettle and buttering a scone, you can take tea. (I won't embarrass this otherwise professionally run hotel by recounting the farce that ensued when I asked for afternoon tea but do remember take your patience, and possibly your own teabag, with you.)

It seems churlish not to eat dinner. The best table, by which I mean most reliable, understated and with the sort of food that quietly pleases, is the Olive Tree at The Queensbury. I managed a huge bowl of fish soup brought to the table in its tureen; a truly toothsome piece of haddock in a broth with clams, mussels and spinach and a plate of creamy and deeply garlicky Pommes Dauphinoise (totally inappropriate but who cares). I wish all restaurants could be like this.

Back in the Royal Crescent, the Bath House is the sort of place you feel you never want to leave. It's like, 'this is it, this is where I am meant to be'. You will be offered sessions called Purity, Radiance, Refine and Renew. You can have Thai or an Indian head massage, reiki or an entire algae wrap. And all the time you will be getting calmer and less stressed. Spend some time (and quite a bit of cash) here and you will glide instead of walk, float instead of swim and smell of lemon grass, tea tree or lavender. And, of course, you're never far from tea and cakes, or maybe even a toasted and buttered Bath bun.

The addresses:

• The Bath House, The Royal Crescent Hotel, 16 Royal Crescent, Bath BA1 2LS. 01225 823333.
• The Olive Tree, The Queensbury Hotel, Russell Street, Bath BA1 2QF. 01225 447928.
• Green Street Seafood Café. 6 Green Street, Bath BA1 2JY. 01225 448707.
• Loch Fyne Restaurant, 24 Milsom Street, Bath BA1 1DG 01225 750120.
• The Fine Cheese Shop, 29 & 31 Walcott Street, Bath BA1 5BN
• Paxton and Whitfield, 1 John Street, Bath BA1 2JL.
• Also, check out the really excellent kitchen shop called Kitchens at 4 and 5 Quiet Street, Bath BA1 2JS. 01225330524
• Mountstevens, Lower Borough Walls, Bath BA1 1QR 01225 400067
• The Sausage Shop, 7 Green Street, Bath BA1 2JY 01225 318300.

St Emilion au chocolat

I associate this recipe with Bath more than any other. It was, at one time, on the menu in no less than half a dozen of the city's excellent restaurants. Made famous at first by Elizabeth David it was then taken up by the disciples of George Perry Smith, the famous local restaurateur. It would be rude to call it chocolate mousse with crumbs in, but in essence that is what it is.

Serves at least 8
200g fine, dark chocolate
225ml milk
100g butter
100g caster sugar
a large egg yolk
150g macaroons or ratafia biscuits
brandy

Break the chocolate into pieces and let it melt in the milk in a small pan over moderate heat. It will go thick and creamy when you stir it. Do not let it come to the boil. Beat the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl till light and fluffy. An electric mixer will make the job much easier than doing it by hand. Beat in the egg yolk. Mix in the chocolate milk. Put half the macaroon, roughly crumbled, into the bottom of a china dish. Sprinkle with enough brandy to dampen them. Pour over half of the chocolate stuff. Add the rest of the crumbled macaroons, a little more brandy, then the rest of the chocolate. Leave to set overnight in the fridge.