Canterbury tales trail forever

If you haven’t read Geoffrey Chaucer’s rendition as yet, let me be the first to walk you through a sleepy English city called Canterbury, with its haunting beauty teeming with history.

My Canterbury tale began two weeks before Christmas, probably the best time to be in England. The festivity is simply infectious.
Don’t let the coach station set against the swanky Whitefriars Shopping Centre fool you. That is probably as urban as this city gets.

Tourists are no novelty here and the number of hostels reinforce that. On advice of the jovial hostel attendant, we decided to have lunch at Whitstable, a seaside town about 8kms from Canterbury, famous for its oysters.

What seemed like a perfectly normal bus ride from Canterbury to Whitstable, didn’t quite unfold as expected.

Mesmerised by the traditional charm of the countryside, flanked by woods and hills, we were driving into the Whitstable skyline, a broadening horizon.

Seaside cafés, shops interspersed with quaint little medieval villas — here was a town that had retained its bohemian charm while welcoming renaissance.

Soaking in this charm, we quite failed to notice that the sea was far behind and we were lost! We had almost reached Herne Bay, another coastal town 3 km from Whitstable.

We were lone tourists stuck in a part of Kent, which though beautiful, didn’t really show any sign of life. Public transport seemed alien to that part. Of course, the English weather wasn’t helping either. It would soon be dark. Walking was the only option.

After several “just around the corner” directions, we were finally along the coast of Tankerton and the sea was once again by our side, this time to guide rather than misguide. Eluding the inviting shingle beach and the beach huts forming a rim to the water’s edge, we marched on to our destination.

At last we reached Whitstable and made our way to Crab & Winkle, a beautiful restaurant overlooking the harbour. Well, lunch may not have been at the time we expected, but it was definitely the lunch we expected — oysters, winkles, cockles, whelks, prawns and smoked salmon!

Our journey back to Canterbury was relaxed; losing our way was not possible with the dazzling Canterbury Cathedral, towering ahead, larger than life, dressed to celebrate.

The cobbled paths had come alive at night with weekend revelry and festivity. We joined a few locals in their celebration at Casey’s, which, we are told used to be a Tudor theatre; it used to be called
The Shakespeare Pub.

Grabbing a little more than 40 winks, we set out early the next morning, to discover this magical city on the River Stour. The surprisingly delicious eggnog latte, as I discovered,
gave me quite the energy boost I needed this morning. 

First on the agenda was to see the three structures that form the World Heritage Site — the Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey and St Martin’s Church.

A crowd gathered outside the Cathedral caught our attention. There was music emanating from the centre of this gathering. It was a group dressed as English natives sharing the spirit of Christmas. Their bagpipes, tambourine, drums, tabor and uninhibited fervour had the whole church square in a tizzy.

From there we walked to the ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey, which is now an entrance to The King’s School. Locals tell us that one of the old synagogues is now the King’s School music room.
Armed with route maps from the hostel (objects here are closer than they appear), we walked along the famous Canterbury ‘city wall’ and reached the Roman Queningate.

The rest of our day was spent strolling the ruins of the Norman Canterbury Castle, St Margaret’s Church, where life-sized character models recreate the magic of Chaucer’s stories in The Canterbury Tales, Westgate, which was once a medieval gatehouse, has now been turned into a museum that reveals its history as a jail.

We decided that Dane John Gardens with its archaic bridge and the lazy river was an ideal setting to settle for the day with some creamy honeycomb ice cream.

While we chose a festive December to discover this sleepy city, summer has its own glory. During summers, tourist can laze in boats, while local tours take you along the River Stour flipping each page of history with you.