Canterbury was the first away-day trip we’ve taken since moving to London. It wasn’t a bad choice, either! Being new to London means I haven’t really found a reason to leave yet, because there is still much I haven’t seen here, let alone across the rest of the country.
Anyway, Canterbury ended up being a beautiful small city. Just one hour from the Kings Cross/St. Pancras station by way of high speed rail. I’ll admit that half the fun of the day was the train ride. The rail network is incredible here. The high speed rail kind of blew my mind. I’m not sure why we don’t do more of that back home. (A: The auto lobby…)
The train ride showed off the green English country side just as you would expect to see. The day was sunny, but very hazy. So some of the pictures show off the haze and some look less than lovely because of it.
Central to a visit to Canterbury is the Canterbury Cathedral. It’s the “Mother Church” of the Anglican Communion (worldwide church that stemmed from the Church of England). Thus it’s the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury—like the one that conducted the marriage of William and Catherine. (I seem to find a way to make everything just a bit royal.
The cathedral was massive, so I don’t think any of the outside shots do it any sort of justice. Ideally, I would have taken photos of it from a hill. But the inside was incredible. The architecture is just fun to look at. I especially like how over the years people just add their little bits and pieces to these structures. Like small little chapels dedicated to people and saints—and people that get buried in the floor tiles. So the inside has all kinds of little nooks and crannies.
We also got to wonder around other bits of town. Our last stop was at he remnants of an old Norman castle. The kind of castle that I would have likely have built had I lived then. Just a square box of rocks.
Here I am at the top of one of the castle stairways. Looking confused
Anyway, it was lots of fun. Per usual, I was most impressed by a recently made statue of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip that I came across just outside the cathedral. So you’ll see that among the photos I took on this trip.
Nothing fancy about these photos—just some fun shots proving I was there.
// Blake
