A day at Canterbury

As planned I got myself organised and headed off to Charing Cross to catch the train to Canterbury. Canterbury is in Kent in the vicinity of Tunbridge Wells but further south. The train trip took about an hour and twenty minutes so it was after 11 am before I arrived in this medieval historic town. It was a pleasant walk from the Railway Station to the Cathedral. There were lots of narrow streets that went off to the left and right as I walked up the main street to the Cathedral. The Cathedral of course is ancient - founded as a Cathedral in 597 AD. The current cathedral is built over the site of the original cathedral and the current cathedral was built in 1377 AD. It was at Canterbury when the King finally broke England away from Rome but the battle for the hearts and minds of the population went on for years. The Kings closest advisor Thomas Becket was murdered in the Cathedral by the Kings Knights and since that murder. Becket although a friend of the King held to the rights of the Church against the King and the Kings Knights took it into their own hands to get rid of this pesky priest. The architecture of the church inside is quite amazing. It never ceases to amaze me how the medieval builders were able to make these beautiful vaulted ceilings from stone. They ceiling is so high it must have been amazing to see how they continued to work (no doubt on shaky wooden scaffolding) to put the stonework in place. I used an audio guide to get around the Cathedral and the guided audio tour took almost three hours. I wandered back to the Railway Station and headed back to London finally arriving back in my hotel room around 5:45 pm. Altogether a lovely day. Warm and sunny with no wind. There us a supporters function tonight which I decided to miss. The last one was a bit of a bun fight with too many people in a small space. From what I have heard tonight's occasion is to be similar and the buses are not going to be back to the hotel until midnight. I am off at 7:15 in the morning for a guided tour of Twickenham so perhaps an early night is a better idea.