Canterbury

I don’t know if you remember in school when they made us read The Canterbury Tales…   I seem to remember I was told that it was the oldest story written in English, or some such thing.   Usually when I go to Wikipedia, it refreshes my memory about these fuzzy facts so that I can put it up on the website  with some reassurance, as dodgy as that may sound…   Anyway, there is no such ‘Wiki-statement’ as it were, so I am not sure what to make of it.  So I have no idea why were made to read these very old stories exactly.  

In any case, if you don’t remember, they tell of various pilgrims travelling from

  Southwark to Canterbury Cathedral.

  Several of you went to Southwark with us: some to the Globe (the replica of the theatre where several of Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed), and other to The Young’s Pub, and some to both!  

OK, back to the pilgrims in Canterbury Tales…  they were going to visit Canterbury Cathedral to the very spot that Archbishop Thomas Becket was martyred in 1170 as a result of Henry II knights misinterpreting something the king mumbled under his breathe.  Back then England was still Roman Catholic.  But as I am sure that you are aware, Henry VIII split from Rome to get five divorces.  Well, OK, he really only needed the one at the time, but I figure he saw the benefit of disposable wives right off.  So the Church of England was born.  We non-English types know it better as the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part…   Well, the head of this church is the Archbishop of Canterbury… and as you might expect, Canterbury Cathedral is his home turf…

Now before I came here, I didn’t know that it was common practice for the churches to build a wall around their property.  In Canterbury, this wall is largely intact.  And the cool bit about that wall is that I booked accommodation at a church owned bed and breakfast that is located inside that 

wall.  The views from our room were awesome, as this is a HUGE cathedral.  I mean, any picture you take and half of it disappears.  Look at this 

one here, the bell tower is the tall one in the middle.  It is about the halfway point of the building.  In the shot from the front, it looks like it is near the back.  You cant even see the back of it, it just disappears!  

Anyway, what is even cooler is that the gates to the church property are closed at 9PM.   So we had to ring for the guard to lets us in through this little door inside a door next to the main gate.   There’s my honey standing next to it. 

And this being England, there is the inevitable ruins of a 1000-year-old Norman castle as well as the obligatory 2000-year old preserved Roman archaeological site, in this case it was a Roman bathhouse.  I always drag my beloved to these things but I just never get tired of seeing remains of buildings that were in use while Jesus was walking the Earth.  In this case, the actual tiles where these people walked.  It just blows my mind.  

The first thing that I noticed upon arriving at Canterbury is the huge sections of its city wall completely intact that steals your gaze as soon as leave the train station.  In London, there are mere slivers of city wall here and there left over from where buildings had been attached.  Here, it is a proper wall!  

All that is quite impressive and makes great subjects for photographs, but for me the best thing about this trip was that we spent some serious time together, just the two of us.  

Cambridge

My beloved attended a conference in Cambridge.  Cambridge’s claim to fame is its university: supposedly one of the world’s finest, it has produced 83 Nobel Laureates.  It is made up of a bunch of colleges.  The conference was at Trinity College.  (Check out the dining hall where my honey ate.) The photo here is part of Kings College.  Much of the university is hidden away as a result of building a barrier of outer structures that form courtyards, to which non-university lowlings, like me do not have access.   One thing I was able to gain access to was the River Cam.  

This picture is from my “Hey Cram, Get out of the …” series.  While in Cambridge, I visited the site of the Cambridge Castle.  I am told that the mound was built about 2000 years ago.   

As most castles sites of this age, it started its life as a wooden structure, later William I (about 1000 years ago) built a stone structure replacing it.  Apparently, Elizabeth I (about 400 years ago) sold most the stones from the castle to the university and church, so various bits of it are contained buildings around town.  

The nicest part of the trip for me was the dinner we had on Saturday night after the conference.  We ate at this place called Cambridge Chop House.  It claimed to serve traditional British cuisine.  It is difficult to say who is most harsh on the judging of British cuisine, the Brits or everyone else.  Suffice it to say that it is not generally something that is bragged about.  But this was nice.  I had smoked haddock served with smashed swede (rutabaga), fried leeks, and a mustard sauce with a poached egg on top.  It was lovely.  My wife had a sirloin steak with mushroom sauce.  It was only slightly overcooked, but had good flavour.  It came with chips (fries), which I did something to because they had a nice moisture inside that is atypical.  I generally do not care for chips but these were quite good.  The bed and breakfast was OK.  It was a bit weird because the man running it didn’t live there.  Next week, we are going to Canterbury.  No conferences, so it will be a proper holiday (vacation).