Annabel and Dave's Awesome Adventures: Canterbury Cathedral via Chilham

Canterbury viewed from the University - the cathedral dominating all

Dave with a field of unidentifiable green stuff

I've been going a bit crazy with the walking lately (or rather rambling) and have bought another walking book. This one is for day walks close to London, highly recommended, it's done by Time Out. The only thing which is slightly disturbing is that there aren't actually any maps in the book. All the walks just have detailed walking notes. But it's still pretty scary, as someone who has always taken maps, to not have anything. The fear is if you miss a turn then you have no way of recovering (short of back-tracking an unknown distance). In this case though I think that fear is (probably) unfounded, in that the walking notes are incredibly detailed. But anyway, it's still something I have to get used to.

Crossing the Great Stour River at Chartham

There's a fast train direct to Canterbury these days, but we chose to change trains and then get off about a stop before Canterbury. It was pretty good actually, walking through the fields. And then you arrive at Canterbury from an unusual direction, through the University, which is on a hill. It means you perhaps get the best view of the cathedral possible. Since the thing is so freaking big, and completely engulfed by the town. Once you get up close it's actually really hard to fit the whole thing in one shot. The other advantage is that you end up arriving a little later, meaning the vast flow of people actually seem to be heading out of the town, leaving the cathedral almost entirely deserted.

Dave in a field of buttercups

The walk itself was pretty good, it was from Chilham to Canterbury, for those who know their English villages. So about 8km as the crow flies from Canterbury, but the walk takes you through a variety of fields and woods along the way. We even managed to get sun burnt!

That's the danger with living here, normally if I was planning an all-day walk in Australia, I would be slathered in sunscreen and carrying litres of water. But here you just get complacent, I don't think I even own sunscreen anymore. Not because there isn't any sun (though lately that has certainly been the case) but because it feels so weak. There's no burning sensation when you are out on a clear, summer's day. I wonder how much the hole in the ozone layer contributes to the terrible burn factor in Australia. But it is definitely something I think we need to remain aware of, just because it's not as bad here, if you are out in the sun for 6 hours, you will still get burnt!

Canola field (called rapeseed here), so yellow!

Apple orchards

We start off walking through all these different fields for the first part. You really don't appreciate how agrarian England still is. In Australia of course we grow our own food, but it seems to be on a much bigger scale, the fields are massive and fairly mono-culture. But here we walked through canola fields, hop fields, apple and pear orchards, and some other unidentified green stuff. Not sure what the other type of crop was, it was fairly popular though.

And all of this was within an hours train ride of London. And they all seemed to be on a fairly small scale, in that individual farmers still owned different plots, and lived on their farms. Rather than the hectares and hectares owned by single farmers in Australia. It was certainly a different feeling. Maybe because everything was so green too. And I just love the right of ways here, most of the time you would skirt the fields, but every now and again the right of way would go right through the farmers crop.

Hops fields, these were massive fields

Chartham Church - impressively large

We walked through Chartham just before lunch, this is the next village on from Chilham, and was a bit bigger (in that it had more than 5 streets). It had this impressive church, which looked more like a castle to be honest. Apparently it was built in 1294 and contains the oldest peal of bells in Kent, though I'm not sure what the competition is like for that title. It was just so wonderfully English though, these tiny little villages, with a massive church, set around a village green (which you wonder if the farmers are still allowed to graze sheep on). It all feels just so relaxing. From there it was on, through a bluebell wood and deer hiding in forests to our lunch spot. We were a little early for lunch, it being well before noon.

We are poking around this pub trying to find the owner, thinking maybe it's closed. No one else is around, then another couple of walkers turn up, so we know we are at the right spot for lunch. Eventually we find the owner, and a suet pudding is served, my first taste of suet. It was definitely a walkers pub, as by the time we were leaving it was full of other walkers. I'm not sure if anyone had driven there at all. We had a good round of bird watching too, sitting in the garden, I managed to see a goldfinch which I was pretty happy about.

Bluebell woods in Blean Woodland - note the spindly trees

The English love their dogs - this is a dog gate next to a style

After lunch it was more fields, but a greater proportion of woods too, we went through the Blean Woods nature reserve. Which is this incredibly ancient woodland. Before you think of gnarled old trees and thick undergrowth, remember this is England, and in a part which has been continuously occupied for thousands of years. So whilst it is classified as an ancient woodland, the caveat is that it has also been continually wooded for thousands of years (meaning people have been chopping down trees in it for ever).

More of Blean - incredibly diverse supposedly

In fact the definition for an ancient woodland is one that has been continuously chopped down since 1600. Apparently that makes it something special in the UK. I mean I get that it's old, but it doesn't mean that each individual tree is all that old. They have some funny definitions for their nature reserves here. I guess this island has been so densely populated for so long, that it's really hard to find somewhere that is untouched. It does make me wonder what they would do if they ever came across an area that hadn't had centuries of human interference. Probably clear it in disgust, I would imagine.

The final test - a field of massive cows! I've never seen such big animals, not sure what type they are

Westgate - largest surviving city gate in England

After that it was just a few more fields, before we popped out, unexpectedly, at the University of Canterbury. That was a bit strange, emerging from this thick wood, to be standing next to the Engineering building. But it really did give you this fantastic view of the cathedral, towering over the rest of the town. And it was a bit easier, the last bit of the walk, downhill, and you could finally see your destination for the first time that day.

Canterbury is a pretty cool town, it was abandoned after the Romans left. Then in 597AD St Augustine and his followers arrived and repaired the walls. And it was soon chosen to be the seat of the first Archbishop. Ever since then the town has been important. One of the more famous aspects is that it was where Thomas Becket was murdered by Henry II's knights in 1170. And after that incident it became a place of pilgrimage for Christians from all over Europe. Henry VIII tried to put a stop to that, what with destroying the shrine and removing all mention of Thomas Becket throughout the kingdom.

The Cathedral is so big it was hard to fit it in one shot

The entrance gate to the Cathedral

As you would expect from such an ancient Cathedral, it was pretty cool inside, there were tombs to old princes and king's of England. And it was all pretty ornate. Definitely worth the day trip out there. The town itself is pretty nice as well, which I didn't appreciate. Obviously with such an old Cathedral, the town has to be pretty old too. So there are some really cool old buildings along the main street, converted into cafes mainly. There is also a canal running through the town, again something I didn't appreciate, and you could go on punt rides if you so desired.

Inside the church grounds it's like another city in itself, it's definitely not just the cathedral, there's a massive boarding school, cloisters, huge gardens, ruins. It's all there. We saw some of the students heading back to their dorms whilst we were there, that must be something else, going to a school on the Canterbury Cathedral grounds. I can't imagine how that changes your outlook on things.

This has already been a really long post, so I'll just leave you with some photos from inside the Cathedral.