Canterbury

The bells the bells! Sunday morning in Canterbury and the church bells are ringing, calling the faithful together. Anne and I buried our heads under our pillows as we have been awake most of the night. Our room was right next to the hotel elevator. The most expensive room of the holiday and probably the worst. Actually, the room was nice and the service great, but the noise arrrgggh!  

The main task of the day – find Anne some new socks. Organised-Anne did not follow our eldest son’s (festival) advice “Always pack too many socks, there is nothing like warm fresh socks”. A quick trip to Debenhams – sorted.

Canterbury is a bit like an unruly child of York. Yes, there is a Cathedral and a wall and a few quaint back streets, but it’s all a bit small and a bit of a mess. Where York (like Winchester) has clearly controlled commercial enterprise, Canterbury doesn’t seem to have a problem with big signs on shop fronts side-by-side with Victorian libraries.  

Continuing our run of luck, the Cathedral was closed. Not to worry, the Crypt was open. As it turned out, in the Crypt (which is huge!) on a Sunday morning you can hear the organ and the monks singing above, pretty awesome.

Back to the mixed-bag high street and into Kaspa’s. A shop where you can sit on an iconic Vespa while eating ice cream. Lovely ice cream, lovely motor scooter you could have been in Venice – Only you’re not.

We checked out at 12 noon and much to our surprise the hotel offered a £75 discount on the room because of the noise. It may have helped that Anne had mentioned the problem to a very nice man behind the desk the evening before. I wasn’t there but evidently, they have become best of friends and Anne can recite his life history. Well done Abode Hotel, in this age of social marketing that was a very good move.

Time to go home. Last stop was Fleet services for milk and bread (I suggested one last burger, but was vetoed) and the final 30 miles to home.  Round trip of 1,463.3 miles, not bad for a bloke and his gal and two pink chairs.