CANTERBURY TALES

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Hi again everyone! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you at home; we wish we could be there to share in a fantastic turkey dinner! The two of us are doing well. We're busy with work, as usual, and counting down the days until our first half-term break which is in two weeks. Yesterday we ventured to Canterbury, a city in Kent in the south east of England.

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We began our day at 7:30am by grabbing a coffee and hopping on a train to London. From London we took a National Express coach bus to Canterbury, arriving in Canterbury just before 11:30am. We started our time in Canterbuy just wandering down the main street which is flooded with shops and tourists. We bought ourselves a brand new 8 megapixel digital camera because our other camera has seen better days!

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Canterbury is a city well-known for its Cathedral and for a famous playwright born there, Geoffery Chaucer. (Another famous person born here, in case you haven't heard of Chaucer, is the dashing Will Turner himself, Orlando Bloom.) The Canterbury Cathedral is truly stunning! It is absolutely massive, standing in the middle of a lush green courtyard surrounded by buildings, forcing visitors to enter the courtyard through a Cathedral gate. The Cathedral is the site where Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in 1170 by followers of King Henry II due to conflict between Becket and the King. The murder of Thomas Becket led to the Cathdral becoming a place of pilgrimage for Christians worldwide.This pilgrimage is what poet and playwright Geoffery Chaucer based his theme on for his 14th-century literary classic the Canterbury Tales. We visited the Cathedral as well as the Canterbury Tales visitor attraction. The Canterbury Tales attraction is located off the main street inside the historic building of St.Margaret's Church. The inside of the church is split into different rooms, each room displaying a storybook re-creation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Full-sized characters and set pieces displayed each story as a theatre creation with an audio guide reading aloud Chaucer's story of the pilgrimage that Christians made from London to the shrine of Sir Thomas Becket in the Canterbury Cathedral. The experience was rather interesting!

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After our visit to the Cathedral and the Canterbury Tales attraction, we went on a boat tour of the River Stour which left from the Old Weaver's House on the main street. The Old Weaver's House is one of the oldest buildings in England and has served many purposes over the years. Currently it is a restaurant but in the past it has served as a bakery and a burlesque house. Our guide told us about the history of Canterbury while rowing us along the river. The River Stour is one of the cleanest rivers in England due to its ban on the use of motorized boats. One of the most interesting parts of the boat tour was the medieval Ducking Stool which hangs over the river, located just outside the Old Weaver's House. In the middle ages, the Ducking Stool was often used to punish nagging housewives. Men could go to the city council with a few coins and ask to have their wives put onto the Ducking Stool. A woman would be tied onto the stool and dunked below the water for a few seconds at a time. If the woman was "smart" enough to close her mouth before entering the water, then it was likely she would survive. However, if she did not close her mouth, this experience could often be fatal due to the pollution levels in the river. The Ducking Stool was also used as a torture device to punish accused witches. A person accused of being a witch would be dunked below the water not for a few seconds, but for a few minutes! If a person survived being under water for that long, they were accused of using magic and thus confirmed to be a witch. They were then burned at the stake. If a person died while being immersed in the water, then clearly they were not a witch and their soul was pardoned by the church and the church paid for a full Christian burial. This was a true lose-lose situation!

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In the evening we saw the West Gate Towers and walked through the West Gate garden. The West Gate Towers stood for six centuries on guard over the road from London. Pilgrims passed through the towers on their way to the shrine of Sir Thomas Becket. On display in the towers are guns and armaments from the Civil War and WWII, used by the defenders of Canterbury. There are prison cells inside the towers and you can see through the murder holes onto the road below. After our walk through the West Gate garden we had dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant. We followed up our classy meal with a coffee and sundae from McDonald's since we still had time to kill before our bus left to go back to London.

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So, that's the story from our latest visit to another part of England. Check back in a few weeks where we'll have great pictures to show you from our trip to Dublin, Ireland! Love, Bri & Will

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Photos

The River Stour
As seen on our boat tour.

The River Stour
As seen on our boat tour.

Comments

[Kath Weston]

Fascinating!
Hi Guys! That looked as though it was amazing!!! Am very jealous! The weather looked beautiful too!! Miss you guys heaps and can't wait to hear about Dublin!!!