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February 2005

Canterbury

David Aaronson
2005-10-01 21:04:54

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Canterbury was our only day trip that was properly outside London. There's no mistaking when you're approaching Canterbury thanks to the enormous cathedral dominating the center of town, and the skyline as well. Especially after miles of rolling hills, sheep farms and the occassional small town. This is the impressive west gate, once inside the city center there is no automobile traffic (during daytime hours) (1). The west gate is a short walk from Canterbury West train station. Incidentally, despite the 'mind the gap' warnings everywhere, Canterbury is the only place we found a significant gap between the station and the train, and it was a serious gap. You could lose a medium size dog in there pretty easy.

We visited on a weekend, but Canterbury was lively and full of people. The main streets, like this one (2) are lined by shops and restaurants and street performers start to appear towards evening.

Canterbury has a lot of the 'olde English' sorts of things we expected to see in London. Half-timbered houses cantilevered over the streets on the upper stories, old stone and brick buildings that have never seen a right angle and lovely little canals. London generally claims the fire of 1666 as a good excuse to not have the older districts, but Canterbury was bombed extensively during World War II and remains remarkably charming.

From a distance you can always see the Cathedral, once in town it sort of disappears behind the stacked houses and narrow streets (3). Access to it can be a little tricky. We sort of circumnavigated it before entering but that worked out okay because we found a lovely pub along the way where we could eat, drink and watch the FA cup. We think Canterbury has, in general, more atmospheric pubs than London does, and we sampled several just to be sure.

Despite all the gates, the only entrance seems to be across from the tourist office ...