Whanne that April with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour, etc., etc. So priketh hem nature in hir corages; That longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, ... And specially, from every shire ende Of Englelond, to ST. IVES they wende, The holy blisful LIGHTHOUSE for to seke, That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke. I include the above (slightly modified) excerpt from the beginning of the Canterbury Tales to try to explain how excited I was to go to St. Ives. Chaucer's pilgrims must have been mighty excited to see whatever relic it was that they were going to Canterbury to see, as it probably took the majority of them along time to wende they're way to the SE. Similarly, it
... read more