Canterbury tales

Part ye fyrst - mye daye ynn Cambrydge (trans: first bit - my day in Cambridge)

I think a reference to the Cambridge website sums the whole thing up - http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambarea/ - as you can see, the whole town uses the academic website. That would be fair enough as the university and the town are pretty much the same thing.

I did a two hour walking tour of Cambridge and that was about enough for me. The tour started out at the Eagle, a Tudor pub with two claims to fame - one of the bars has a ceiling covered with graffitti courtesy of the WWII airmen stationed there and the gentlemen who discovered the structure of DNA used to drink there.

We then went around the colleges. The colleges either charge for admission or have big signs up telling tourists to bugger off in three or four different languages. The cost of the tour included admission to Kings College (http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/), which was well worth a look. The Chapel was particularly lovely, it is one of the few buildings that wasn't completely trashed by Cromwell's mob during the Reformation. They did graffitti all over the walls, but this was cleverly covered with panelling - when the panelling was removed during some renovations in the 1970s, all the graffitti was exposed but by then it was old enough to be of historical interest.

I tried walking back to the hostel along the Cam, but the colleges seem to have appropriated it for private use. I end up walking beside something that looks a lot like an open drain, thanking God that the weather is still quite cold (I am now the proud owner of a trashy long-sleeved souvenir shirt labelled 'Cambridge', it makes me look like the last word in sad tourists). From the drain, I can look over the fields and gardens to the colleges. The Cam goes between the colleges and the fields, I get what I hope are some good shots of Kings College with punts and cows. The funny thing is, you can't actually see the river, all you can see are the upper half of the punters gliding past. At least, I thought it was funny, but thanks to my mates at the YHA, I'm so sleep-deprived, I'd laugh at anything.

One of my room-mates was a lovely Dutch lady called Anna-Mieke. I didn't introduce myself to the other two lassies when they came in at midnight making enough noise for an entire herd of elephants. Anna-Mieke had told me that they wouldn't turn the light on when they came in - they didn't, they opened the bloody curtains, leaving me lying full in the glare of the streetlight outside. They also received calls on their mobiles at odd hours of the night - I lay there, plotting to silence the phones for ever. Unfortunately, the toilet was blocked. I did have a second plan but couldn't work out which phone to insert into which arsehole - that put paid to plan B. Eventually, I gave up and went to breakfast.

Breakfast!! Wondrous revelation!! In Norwich, I had a little tanty in Boots, where I went to purchase Lactaid. Lactaid is a wonderful thing that prevents lactose intolerant reactions. The lass suggested I should go to a health food shop, which I took as a bit of an insult because in Australia, the chance of finding anything of therepeutic value in a health food shop is practically nil. However, this is furrin parts and things is different here. I am now the proud owner of a bottle of lactase tablets, which are doing very nicely thank you, although I do need to be careful not to overuse them.

Train travel - more wondrous revelations!! All I'll say about the trip is that I left Cambridge at 3:30 and didn't get to Canterbury until nearly 8pm. I also ended up at the opposite end of Canterbury to the YHA. This was God being kind to me. I was too stuffed to walk all the way through town and I ended up at the cutest B&B, a place called the Tudor Rose. It is a genuine Tudor building, with seriously dodgy floors and it is just adorable. I slept like a rock.

Before doing my rock impersonation, I managed to grab a delicious dinner at the Old Weaver's House (which is now a lovely pub) on the riverside - I was sitting next to the old ducking stool about two feet from the water's edge (two feet straight down) in a gorgeous garden. Canterbury makes much better use of its rivers than Cambridge - at least from the point of view of the public, I'm sure the students appreciate their river views very much.

Today, I went out to see the sights (http://www.canterbury.co.uk/). First stop, the Cathedral. Bit of damage from Henry VIII, bit more from Mr Cromwell and his mates. Just inside the door, they have a list of the Deans, starting in 800 or something like that. Their list of organists doesn't start until 1400, musicians have always been undervalued!! Love the Cathedral.

My next stop is the Roman Museum, which is very cute and user-friendly. They even have an area where you can handle the exhibits!! Next stop is the West Gate towers via the Greyfriars Hospital. That's Hospital as in a place for pilgrims to sleep, rather than a place for sick people. The Hospital still has eight units that are rented out to senior citizens. A couple of the units are built over the Stour River like a little bridge. That's where I want to live when I get old, they are soooo cute!! Actually, I need to be more specific - I want to live in the top floor one, because I bet you anything the bottom one is liable to flood. At present, you need to be a member of the congregation in good standing, which may present a problem, but hopefully old people will be a bit thin on the ground in forty years and I'll get a look-in.

The West Gate towers now straddle a main road - I have some excellent photos of a bulldozer and a double-decker bus going through the arch. The bus driver gets a round of applause, the gate is so narrow that he has to fold his mirrors in to make it through. It's very impressive.

From the West Gate, I come back to the CBD via the Royal Museum, Art Gallery and Buff's Museum - I also take in the Museum of Canterbury. You can get into all the Museums on one ticket and none of them take more than an hour or so to get through. The Museum of Canterbury is a bit slow at the start, as it covers a lot of the Roman Museum stuff - however, they make up for it by having a Middle Ages exhibit that includes genuine mediaeval poo. What more could you ask for?

Other impressions of Canterbury: it has a strong new-age counterculture (I'm writing this in a New Age/pagan book and gift shop). The entire CBD is car free, which rocks. There are heaps of street performers, some of whom are quite good. Basically, I'm in love with the place - I'd quite happily move in tomorrow if only I could.

I finish my day with a boat tour along the Stour. From the tour guide, I learn that the Romans made extensive alterations to the course of the river, which explains why it divides into two on the outskirts of town and also why it runs along the bottom of a two metre deep aquaduct. Gorgeous little houses line the edges of the aquaduct, our guide points out that these were once the cheapest houses in town because the river was so polluted. I suspect that the residents to either side went some way to causing the problem although no-one has a garderobe at the moment. Some of the houses do have doors that open out straight over the water, which might cause a problem if you were a bit absent-minded.

From the water, we have an excellent view of the Alchemist's Tower. This was built by a Victorian gentleman with far too much money and a bizarre sense of humour - people came from all over to meet the alchemist and of course there weren't no such animal. I guess it was something to get bums on seats once Henry VIII pulled down St Thomas' shrine.

One thing we don't have an excellent view of is the old mill, which burned down some time in the 19th century. One of the women in the boat recalls her grandmother telling her about the fire - at a guess, the lady is about 60 so that would put the fire about 120 years ago. An architect has built a very interesting modern interpretation of the mill's shape in a site nearby, but I don't feel like it's the same thing.

Here endeth the Canterbury tale!!