Weekend à Canterbury

We went to Canterbury for the last of the summer wine (or rather, some stout in Pegasus craft beer bar). First thing you notice about Canterbury is that once there were Mediaeval walls, now there's a ring road and there's definitely an in crowd and an out crowd. Our B&B is outside of the ring road, although it's only a 15 minutes walk along the River Stour to get into the city centre. It's been so long since we stayed in a traditional B&B with a landlady and a mini kettle (although in this case it's a Nespresso - babyboomers are so hot for Nespressi) and small packets of biscuits that I'd forgotten how guesthouse owners love to chat or write three page essays in the B&B binder about how they set up the B&B, including details of wall painting and boiler replacement. There's also an advert for a wood cabin they own in Wales which they inherited from a friend "who sadly died of Covid". Ok then.

Second thing you notice about Canterbury is that a lot of the chain shops have closed down - no more Cath Kidston, Yo Sushi or Costa Coffee. However, for small independents the markets seems to be booming:  there are three book shops (and several charity shops selling books), two record shops (and another one opening soon), three retro gaming/computer nerd shops and innumerable craft shops selling jewellery, pottery, hippie-ish clothing etc.

The third thing you notice is that all the cafes serve the same rather boring food (Paninis (sic), baked potatoes) until we find the hipster place with its flat whites and sourdough sarnies.

Fourth thing is that Thomas à Beckett was a martyr for tourism. The cathedral is expensive to visit but pretty good VFM with the spooky atmospheric crypt and the outdoor space with herb garden and remains of the monastery. But if T à B hadn't gone and got himself murdered by accident, the
pilgrims wouldn't have started walking here and Canterbury wouldn't have become a tourist mecca (nowadays we get here on HS1 in 48 minutes, which is more efficient). I wondered why people schlep over to Spain to do the Santaiago de Compostela when they could do the pilgrim trail here from Winchester to Canterbury but I then discovered that it's mostly A-roads nowadays. Of course it is.

Reading about Thomas and Henry II, it seemed that the trouble was started by Thomas who got a cob on when Henry decided to get coronated at York, rather than Canterbury, and Thomas ex-communicated him on the spot, which is a bit extra. It's like the ultimate rap beef.

The next thing is the Roman museum, which is the usual collection of pots and statues of Romans "how they lived". There are the remains of a Roman street in the basement but behind glass. I prefer St Albans where you don''t have to pay to get into the Roman town and you can wander freely around the ancien bits 'n' bobs (for the same reason, Avebury will always beat Stonehenge). There's a tedious tendency in this country to cover everything in glass, precious and untouchable. I realise you need to protect ye olden stuffe from the general public, but at the same time, you don't get Hadrian's wall behind a glass facade.

Final thing is that Canterbury council needs to ban cars within the walls. It's ridiculous that there are giant SUVs careering around narrow mediaeval streets. the city centre is about 15 minutes across, no-one needs a car to cover that distance. Take the Nespresso machines and the cars away from the baby-boomers and life would be so much better.