Canterbury Cathedral - Wednesday, 16 December

Gargoyles on the Cathedral: Spent most of the day touring the Cathedral – there were very helpful volunteers circulating the facility with information about the history and background. There was an interesting, very modern sculpture on the wall, so I asked a volunteer about it. He told me it was a memorial to Thomas Becket and that it was full of symbolism about the number of guards who struck the blows, etc. He explained in detail the whole event and showed me where everything took place, including the cloister where they chased him into the cathedral, ending up at the spot in the transept where we were standing, the exact location where Becket was killed. The candle on the floor marks the location of Thomas Becket’s shrine until it was demolished and removed during the Reformation by order of Henry VIII: I also heard a chamber group from the University of Kent rehearsing in the nave for that evening's annual winter concert. I later stopped in the office for the Save Canterbury Cathedral fund, which is in the process of raising 40 million pounds for badly needed preservation and restoration of stained glass and structural elements of the building. They had a couple of sections from one of the huge windows on display: I then went to the Roman Museum, an underground exhibit of the ruins of an ancient Roman house that were found under the city streets during a construction project. The ruins of the Roman town date to around 70 CE, but here is a glass flask that was also on display. It was found during the draining of a nearby lake and dates from the 4th century:

The Crab & Winkle Way - Tuesday, 15 December

Now that I've been home for a while, I'll try to finish this trip journal...

On Tuesday, I hired (rented) a bike to ride out to the seaside city of Whitstable to the north, anticipating fresh seafood at some local pub on the bay. The route is called the Crab & Winkle Way, and is a 7 mile walking/bicycling path that runs in part along an old railway track. It was originally the old salt road that the Romans used for transporting salt from the bay to the city. It is now route 1 on Britain’s National Cycle Network.

The Crab & Winkle Way through Clowes Wood:

I had gotten a nice guide to the route from the visitor center and stopped frequently to read about the area (and accidentally get off the route a bit in the University of Kent neighborhoods). About three miles out from Canterbury, I stopped at a little country church and visited with a couple of men doing some repair work on the inside.

The Parish Church of St. Cosmus and St. Damian in the Blean:


Turns out the church was built in 1233. They were very talkative and understandably proud of the history of their church and gave me a nice tour of the inside. One of them also explained how the exterior walls were set with pieces of knapped flint, which forms in the chalk – a construction technique I had seen frequently, but couldn’t figure out.

Church wall detail

I wandered around the grounds taking pictures when I started to see tiny snowflakes. By the time I got to Whitstable it was really coming down, so I just turned around and raced back to Canterbury. It was a nice ride for most of the afternoon, though, past farmer’s fields and through ancient woodlands. And blowing snow.


Returned the bike and had a bite to eat and warmed up a bit. I had met a sax player busking holiday songs on the high street as I walked to the bike shop. We talked for a bit about the jazz that had come from Canterbury in the past, and he recommended a club in town that evening, so I went out to hear “Swamp Duck”. It was pretty standard blues (Tuesday is blues night at the club), but the musicianship was pretty good.