July 25: More Canterbury

I learned yesterday that today is the feast day of St. James, so this morning I went to a saint's day communion service.  This was in a small chapel in the "crypt" (basement) and was very simple, with no music or sermon.  It was very nice and friendly, though, with only about 20 people there.  So I've been to three different services in this cathedral: three very different kinds of services in very different spots.

Before the service I wandered around the cathedral and took pictures from new angles, including this one that shows some of the renovations/repairs that are currently in progress:

When you get up a little closer, some of the walls are decorated with sculptures, like this:

The names with many of the older ones are missing or illegible.  Here are some interesting ones with very readable names:

From left to right, those are Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Phillip and Queen Elizabeth I.


After the service I joined a guided tour of the cathedral.  I did have to pay extra for that, but it was well worth it.  We had a very knowledgeable and entertaining guide who took us all over the place for an hour and a half and showed us all sorts of things that I would have missed without his help.

One of the most famous things about the cathedral is the murder of Saint Thomas Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury and was killed inside the cathedral in 1170 as a result of power struggles between himself and the king.  Reports started spreading of miraculous healings for people who visited his tomb and it became a very popular pilgrimage destination, leading to the famous "Canterbury Tales" about a group of pilgrims.  During the reformation, many English cathedrals and the tombs inside them were stripped of valuable jewels and other items, but apparently Henry VIII gave special orders that Becket's tomb be completely destroyed and it was done very thoroughly.
I suppose he was too important a symbol of struggles between church and state.

But people still remember Becket when the visit the cathedral.  For centuries there was no visible sign of him in the cathedral.  Then in 1982, a reigning pope (John Paul II) visited England for the first time ever.  He met with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the two of them publicly knelt in prayer at the approximate spot of Becket's murder.  Both of them remarked that it was a shame that there was no visible recognition of this history event in the cathedral, so this marker was created:

Following that, the cathedral commissioned a sculpture for nearby:

Becket was killed by several knights with swords.  The sculpture was designed to be lit from the side, so that it creates cross-shaped shadows.

Here are more pictures from the tour.  First, the nave -- the pulpit and the ceiling followed by the best view I could manage of the whole area:

and two of the many, many beautiful stained-glass windows in the cathedral:

After the tour I grabbed some lunch and checked out of the Lodge.  As I left the cathedral grounds I snapped yet another view of this enormous, historic building:

To balance that big picture, here's a little bird from the cathedral grounds

It has been fun to see birds in Britain that look different from birds I see at home.  This one looked like a pigeon, but its coloring is very different from North American pigeons.

I headed to the train station to catch my train back to London, where I will spend the last few days of this trip.  After a day spent mostly on my feet I was looking forward to a nice quiet sit on the train.  I thought I was a real pro at British trains by this time, but this trip turned out to be a bit of an adventure!  I arrived at the train station in plenty of time and typed my confirmation code into the little machine that spits out your actual ticket.  No problem there.  Then I turned to the screen in the station to find out which platform my train would be using.  Instead of a platform number, I saw the word "cancelled".  Oh dear....  So I went to the desk and the nice man at the desk told me that my ticket would be good on a different train and told me when and where to catch it.  That sounded easy and reasonable, since I'd learned by this time that some tickets are good on more trains besides the one indicated on your ticket.

To make a long story short, after a few stops the conductor on the train I boarded told me that my ticket was NOT good on that train and I'd have to change trains.  I did that, but when the conductor on the new train came around to check tickets he told me that my ticket wasn't good there either.  He advised me to stay on the train anyway and just explain again when I got off in London.  When I got off in London I was chastised one more time for being on the wrong train, but forgiven.  I guess my "foreign" accent made them accept my very real confusion.  Since the last train I ended up on was a high-speed train and my original train was scheduled to stop at every single little town on the way, I ended up getting to London an hour earlier than planned in spite of all the confusion.  Very strange.

I did kind of enjoy my conversations with the conductors.  They were very nice to this silly foreign person who obviously wasn't born knowing how the train system worked.  One of them called me "my lovely" at the end of every sentence, which sounds very odd to a North American ear but was just friendly and reassuring in England.  The other asked me where I was from and when I said "Canada" he made a joke about it being a shame, because if I were American it would be easier for people to believe that I was confused.  I didn't tell him I was born in the U.S.!

July 24: Canterbury

When I was planning this trip, I knew I wanted to spend a little time in Dover.  As I went to make reservations for a train from Dover to London I saw that the train would go right through Canterbury and that I'd be traveling on a Sunday.  So it seemed like a no-brainer to make a little stopover in Canterbury to go to church at the cathedral.  That meant one less day in London afterwards, but as it turned out I had some extra time London I hadn't planned on, so I'm really glad I decided to spend a night in Canterbury.  I left Dover on a 9 a.m. train.  It only takes about half an hour to get to Canterbury, which left me time to get settled before the 11 a.m. Communion service. 
 
When I got off the train I had my mapping app all set up to guide me to the Cathedral grounds, but an older man in town saw me leaving the train station with a suitcase and looking around and he asked me where I was going and offered me directions.  It was very kind of him and I'm so glad he did because he gave me two options -- the quick way (which agreed with my app) or the way through the public gardens.  I took the latter and it was beautiful and very restful after my rush to get onto the morning train.

After I got through the gardens, Canterbury started reminded me of York -- adorable little pedestrian streets with medieval walls and gates still visible around them.  Canterbury hasn't kept nearly as much of the walls as York, but still there are quite a few gates and bits of walls, and they have Roman stones at the base.

 

And as I walked through the cute little streets I turned a few corners and saw the Cathedral looming over the town.  No need for more directions after that; even I couldn't get lost with that huge landmark to guide me!

I had found an absolutely wonderful place to stay in Canterbury -- the Canterbury Cathedral Lodge.  I highly recommend it.  Its main purpose is to provide a place to stay for clergy and others who are attending conferences and retreats at the Cathedral, but they offer the rooms to the general public when they're not needed for those things.  It's a very comfortable full-service hotel and it was actually cheaper than the alternatives I looked at when you take into account the extras provided: free breakfast and free admission to the Cathedral.  And it has a very lovely, peaceful atmosphere.

Canterbury is different from the other big famous cathedrals I've visited in Great Britain in that its grounds are completely enclosed in a wall.  That includes the cathedral itself plus administrative buildings and the conference center and beautiful gardens of its own.  Like all of the other famous cathedrals, you can enter for free to go to a service but if you want to explore as a tourist you have to pay admission.  At Canterbury, that applies to all of the walled grounds.  On Sunday mornings the grounds aren't open to tourists until after the big Sunday morning service.  But I was allowed in because of my reservation for the lodge.  One of the big perks of staying there is that you can go into the grounds anytime.  (There are also rules about being quiet and respecting the fact that the Cathedral is a place of worship, but not a problem for me.)  I quickly checked in to the conference center and dropped off my suitcase until my room became available that afternoon and they assured me that my guest privileges lasted all day today and tomorrow, even though I was staying only one night.  They gave me a guest pass for getting in and out of the grounds during restricted hours.

So there I was, with free access to the beautiful area around the Cathedral with very few other people around -- no tourist crowds! -- for a whole hour before the big service started.  I made the most of it; I viewed the Cathedral from every angle possible.  Not every angle yielded good pictures, since in many places it's hard to back up very far, but here are two that I like:

And then I wandered through the grounds.

Here's one more thing I found that I really like.  It's a stone in one of the gardens with a quote taken from a journal of William Wilberforce:

The full quote in readable form is:
    The day has been delightful.

    I was out before six & made the fields my oratory the sun shining as bright & as warm as at 
    midsummer.

    I think my own devotions become more fervent when offered in this way amidst the general  
    chorus with which all nature seems on such a morning to be swelling the song of praise & 
    thanksgiving.

What a perfect quote for a Cathedral garden!  William Wilberforce, by the way, was a member of the British parliament who worked very hard for the abolition of slavery, which they achieved in 1807 -- over 50 years before my home country and without a war.  I know this not because I'm a history expert, but because I saw a little monument to Wilberforce on my long walk in London last Sunday.

After a while the crowds started coming in for the big Communion service and I joined them. It was in the nave of the church.  Every cathedral is different and the nave of Canterbury seemed a bit rougher than the others I've seen on this trip.  Pretty, but not as polished.  Part of that may be just because they have simple wooden chairs instead of pews.  I liked the fact that it was obviously a parish serving local people and not just a tourist thing.  There was a visiting choir which sang nicely and a very good sermon from the Vice Dean -- who happens to be a woman!  She was shaking hands with people on the way out and I chatted with her for a moment about something interesting she had said in her sermon and I felt very welcomed.

By then it was time for lunch.  I wandered around the cute little pedestrian streets and found a place advertising organic food.  I don't usually take food pictures, but the lunch I got from the "My Little Box" restaurant was so cute and unusual that I had to snap a shot before I ate:

It's a slice of quiche plus a sampler of all their salads, served up in -- yes -- a little box.  Made of recycled paper.  And it was yummy (the food, not the box!)

After lunch I wandered the streets a little more:


Then it was time to check into the hotel.  My room is really nice and looks like it was designed with some real thought for what you'd need to be comfortable on a retreat where you'd want contemplative time.  Besides a comfortable bed, there's a nice big desk and a window seat overlooking a pretty garden:

After leaving my suitcase in this nice room, I went back to the cathedral for a beautiful Evensong service.  This service was in the quire, so I got to see a different part of the cathedral and it was beautiful.  And the music was amazing!  It was a cathedral choir from Grace Cathedral in San Fransisco and they were wonderful and so was the organist.  Two very different sorts of services in one day.

After that I really needed to stop a while and put my feet up.  I went back to my lovely room and got to sit and enjoy it.  I worked on this blog post and did some reading and had some wonderful peace and quiet.

This is a very long post, but I obviously have fallen in love with Canterbury.  I'm only here for one night, but I hope someday to come back and stay longer.  I think David would really love it too!

July 23: A Castle and a Traffic Jam

This morning after breakfast I asked the very nice owner of my B&B about catching a bus up to the castle.  There are no buses.  I asked for advice about calling a taxi.  She offered to call one for me and disappeared and was gone for longer than I expected, then she came back and told me there were no taxis available either.  Every one of the taxis in town was caught up in a horrific traffic jam.  They had a TV in the breakfast room playing the morning news and it included an item about this, but I hadn't realised quite how bad it was.  Here is a link to a news story from today.  I'm not sure whether that will be available indefinitely.  In summary, the French have very understandably decided that they need to make more careful security checks after the terrorist activity that's been going on in Europe lately, so they have instituted new policies for checking people coming over from Dover on the ferries.  It seems, however, that neither they nor the English authorities have supplied extra people to do the more time-consuming screenings.  The result is a huge long back-up holding up people wanting to get on the ferries.  The taxis do a lot of business shuttling people from the train station to the ferry terminal and they're all stuck in the mess. 

The owner assured me that the walk to the castle wasn't as bad as I thought, so off I went.  And she was right.  It wasn't as long as it looked, although parts of it were steep.  I just took it slow and turned around and admired the views when I needed to catch my breath.  Before I knew it I turned a corner and realised how high I was when I saw the Channel for the first time:

I debated with myself several times today about whether I could see France across the Channel and the truth is that I really don't know.  At times I thought I might be seeing land across the water, but it may have been just a change in the haze.  Still, it was really exciting to see the Channel itself.  That narrow body of water has been a part of an awful lot of history!

Soon after that, I crossed over the castle moat and got my first view of the Castle:

 Like most castles, this one is not a single building but a walled complex containing many buildings.  In this one, the ages of the buildings vary a lot.  This location has been important for a very long time and they think there were Iron Age fortifications here.  The Romans certainly were here, and the castle includes this Roman lighthouse:

 

The building next to the lighthouse is a Saxon church, currently under renovation (so we couldn't go in) and it is still being used for church services.

I wasn't even at the top of the hill yet!  After more uphill walking, I reached the medieval castle, consisting of several buildings enclosed by a wall with many towers for defense. 

Henry II was responsible for a lot of the medieval part of the castle.  If (like me) you have trouble keeping all the kings straight, here is what I learned today plus a little help from Google.  Henry II  was the great-grandson of William the Conquerer and lived from 1133 to 1189.  This was a time when the kings of England also ruled a lot of modern-day France.  He was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine (a marriage which added quite a bit to his land) and they had three sons who were always bickering with each other and trying to undermine their father.  Two of these sons are well known from the Robin Hood legends: Richard the Lionhearted and King John.  Henry II also is the king who is reputed to have said "who shall rid me of this turbulent priest?", leading to the death of Thomas Becket, who will certainly come up again when I visit Canterbury.  

Anyway, Henry II built many buildings up on this hill, all fortified with walls and towers, to protect the position from invading ships and also to show off his power and prestige to visiting European monarchs.  The largest structure inside the walls is the Great Hall:

Inside there are many rooms made up to look like they might have in Henry II's time, with costumed interpreters who made it all very interesting.  One of the rooms was a chapel built in memory of Thomas Becket.  Not sure if that was King Henry expressing penance or saying "wasn't my fault"....  The lighting wasn't good enough to get any decent pictures of these rooms; as one of the interpreters pointed out, safety and staying warm were a lot more important to these people than the light levels!  I did get some good pictures from the windows:

I even mastered my fear of heights enough to climb to the roof of the building for more wonderful views, including this one with the ferry coming in:

The castle continued to be used for military purposes for many years, including the Napoleonic wars and several other squabbles with France and ending with World War II.  There are lots of tunnels from various periods underneath the visible part of the castle.  I took a guided tour of some of these which were used doing World War II:

It hasn't been publicly known until fairly recently, but the military base at Dover did a lot of important things in World War II, including organizing the evacuation of Dunkirk and misleading the Nazis about the planned location of the D-Day invasion.  The tour was structured as if the people on tour were being briefed to join the war effort.  It was very interesting and moving to learn what the real people involved did without much public recognition.

After hours of walking around, I headed back down.  On the way I noticed the clever organic way they are keeping down the weeds in some of the steep sections of the Castle hill:

At this point I had certainly accomplished one of my goals for the day, which was to explore the castle.  But I hadn't really gotten a good view of the White Cliffs yet -- just a few glimpses of them edge on, like this:

Still, it wasn't the big panorama I'd been hoping for. So instead of walking back to the B&B the way I came I figured out how to get to the area near the ferry port.  People talk about seeing the White Cliffs as they sail in on the ferry, so I figured I'd get a view there and I was right.  They are huge and bright white and very impressive!

My feet were pretty tired by this time, but it was worth the extra steps to see this famous and beautiful sight.

I also saw a much less beautiful sight in this area:

Traffic was still backed up and at a standstill.  I watched the news this evening and heard that there were people in those cars -- including families with small children -- who were without food, water and even bathrooms all day.  Some good Samaritans had started taking supplies around to the cars; I wish I had known and I would have helped them, sore feet or not.  I do understand the need for security, but this wasn't managed well at all.  It reminds me of the trip we took to Florida with 3 small children soon after 9/11 -- but that was just a few miserable hours in Pearson Airport and not a whole day in the heat.