Why Visit Canterbury Cathedral

It's impossible to visit Canterbury and not visit the Cathedral. As English churches and church grounds go, it's a goodun. 

1. The ticket is a year long and allows access to most of the buildings and gardens. If I lived in Canterbury, I would totally spend my lunch hours here in the gardens. 

2. The architecture and sculptures dot the grounds and tower over you. The Gothic style is mostly what survives today having been rebuilt after a fire in 1174.

3. The poor man's Bible aka the stained glass windows of the cathedral. During a time when the masses were largely illiterate, church decorations and stained glass windows were used to illustrate teachings and stories of the Bible. I couldn't interpret the teaches, but I still enjoyed viewing the colourful windows and was amazed by the craftsmanship. 

4. Stroke a postbox. A George V postbox no less. So very English. Go on, you know you want to.

stoking a King George V post box, as you do.

5. The gardens. All of the gardens. The peace and tranquility you can imagine within a medieval church grounds.

I know I won't be using my ticket again, but I would definitely visit this cathedral a second time. I've not yet been to Westminster Abby, but there was something about this place that felt so special and drew me in. Pretty flowers might have had something to do with it.

The day of our visit was actually the anniversary of the start of WWI for Britain. During our tour of the grounds we discovered this plaque with the honour roll of the Kent Battalion and a poppy wreath laid in memory of the fallen. It seemed appropriate to post this today, Remembrance Day.

Canterbury Travels

When the accommodation was first booked for Canterbury, it was merely a means to an end. We were attending the Whitstable Oyster Festival and Whitstable was fully booked. We started looking around for alternative locations and Canterbury seemed like a good a place to stay as any. It was a 20 minute drive from the festival location, I could then add another English town visit to my list, and it had some tourist attractions I was interested in seeing. Turns out, I HEART Canterbury. It was an appropriate mix of cultural, historic, and quaint. I wanted to try all the restaurants and cafes. Take all the pictures of buildings. Visit all the museums and tourist sites. 

An old Roman courtyard undulating from time and movement of the earth

Once arrived in Canterbury I started thinking about the one thing I knew about this place; The Canterbury Tales. Then I realized, I don't actually know anything about The Canterbury Tales and Geoffrey Chaucer. Lucky for me, someone had put together The Canterbury Tales Museum; highly cheesy, purely for tourists, and I loved it. A small selection of the 20 plus stories written in Middle English at the end of the 14th century are told using dioramas and audio from the storytellers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. Was I the only one who hadn't read this? Has it passed by anyone else's knowledge?

While living in England, I hadn't often thought I could live in any other city that London, but the more I wandered these streets and conversed with the locals, the more I could see myself settled in this town. Besides, it's only an hour away (on the express train) from central London.

Fun travels!