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Canterbury
Tuesday, August 27th, 2013 12:50 pmBack in the office, then, after a nice five-day break.
Boo Hiss.
After work on Wednesday![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ellefurtle and I jumped on a train at Victoria and disappeared off to Canterbury for a couple of nights. No particular reason, you understand, but it’s nice to get away.
Our hotel was just off the Buttermarket and seems to have somehow installed itself hermit crab like between and around a number of other buildings, all of some remarkable vintage. I guess at some point, the entrance would have been a tiny alley between two other buildings, but now it’s a door that leads directly onto a staircase that goes up to reception on the first floor. Off to the side of the reception area are more corridors to the kitchen and tiny dining rooms that feel as though the gentile ghosts of Jane Austen books should flit through them. There is a small, low corridor to a small lounge, which in turn leads to the ‘roof garden’ (a fire escape style iron ledge with a table, potted plants, two chairs and a splendid view of the cathedral). The other corridor is short and terminates in a door that opens out on to the rooftops.
On to the rooftops.
Well, that was unexpected. There was a non-slip walkway across the roof (Furtle had never been on a roof before) across to another door in an entirely different building (or buildings) from which extended further corridors and stairwells leading to bedrooms in yet further buildings. I’d love to see an architect’s 3D cross section of the hotel. Our room looked out of the first storey above the street just down from the entrance. Imagine, I suppose, clean and well appointed servants’ quarters in Gormenghast.
Furtle’s record of getting us into odd hotels remains intact.
That evening we wandered out for a look around the town (remaining within the mediaeval walled area, of course). We found a nice little pub, which I would imagine is crammed with students during term time. I had a pint of (I think) Biddlestone’s cider at a mere 8% and we listened to some interesting music, a sort of progressive punk… Of course, being in Canterbury, there was no 3G for my iPhone to latch on to, so there was no possibility of using ‘Shazam’ to find out what we were listening to. I asked a 23 year old Gandalf at the bar, but he just responded, “Sorry, Dude. I wasn’t listening, I was talking.” He did agree though,. That there was some strange music on the jukebox. Pity. Someone suitably obscure has lost out on a possible sale on account of us having no idea what we had heard.
Dinner was fish’n’chips for me and pizza for Furtle in a splendid little pub/restaurant around the corner down the (I think) High Street, next to the canal. We ate in the semi enclosed garden area, with huge amounts of ivy-like creeper along the rafters under the roof. We even found and drank the restaurant’s last remaining bottle of Kentish Red Wine, which was rather nice. We know it was the last, because we had to drop back to cheap Italian plonk after the bottle had dried up, despite our wish to consume more.
It turns out that after about 11.30pm until around 10.30am, central Canterbury is deathly quiet. Life retreats into the pubs etc and the streets are almost village lane, quiet. So quiet, in fact, that someone like me, who has spent the past few years living on main roads in London, it was difficult to sleep. Or so I thought. I completely missed the drunk at about 2am, wandering down the street shouting and swearing at everything he saw.
Next morning was, of course, rainy. Very rainy. So we went to look around the cathedral, which ranks as my favourite English cathedral and probably my favourite full stop. It is about 25 years since I’d been there previously and it turns out that the stone on the inside isn’t quite a pink-hued as I’d remembered, but then 25 years ago, it was sunny and I can see from the architecture that sun might give the stone a pink glow. It is light and airy, unlike many cathedrals made of darker stone, and reflects the internal dichotomy of the Church of England in being relatively shorn of icons, statues etc, but not entirely so. There are still a few to be had and not just tombs.
The candle that stands on the wide, empty spot marking the place inhabited for close on 300 years by the shrine to St Thomas of Canterbury (or Thomas Ā Beckett, as you may know him) surely couldn’t exist in another context. After Henry VIII ordered its destruction during the Reformation, it would surely have been replaced in later years in another country. But not here. The space in front of the altar remains, marked by an eternal candle.
Down in the crypt is the ‘Martyrdom’ marking the spot, I think, where Henry II lost his turbulent priest. It is a very modern-looking piece but I didn’t get to check precisely when the sculpture was installed.
After the cathedral, in which we spent an unprecedented two and a half hours, we went for a pub lunch where we had a humongous cheese sandwich, chips and (another) pint of cider. The remainder of the day was spent wandering around shops and such, with me dithering over the possibility of getting a tattoo (I didn’t).
Dinner was, against the odds, at Café Rouge. Initially we had decided to avoid chains and try local, but frankly (!) we fancied French cuisine and for a chain, Café Rouge is pretty good it has to be said.
Friday morning, we wandered a bit before catching a train home. We had wondered about staying just the one night, but I think we were right to make it two. I doubt we would have enjoyed wandering around for a full day lugging our bags around. As it was, we caught the 12.30 train and were home in time to sit in the pub garden for another pint of cider.
And that was all before the weekend started.
Boo Hiss.
After work on Wednesday
ellefurtle and I jumped on a train at Victoria and disappeared off to Canterbury for a couple of nights. No particular reason, you understand, but it’s nice to get away. Our hotel was just off the Buttermarket and seems to have somehow installed itself hermit crab like between and around a number of other buildings, all of some remarkable vintage. I guess at some point, the entrance would have been a tiny alley between two other buildings, but now it’s a door that leads directly onto a staircase that goes up to reception on the first floor. Off to the side of the reception area are more corridors to the kitchen and tiny dining rooms that feel as though the gentile ghosts of Jane Austen books should flit through them. There is a small, low corridor to a small lounge, which in turn leads to the ‘roof garden’ (a fire escape style iron ledge with a table, potted plants, two chairs and a splendid view of the cathedral). The other corridor is short and terminates in a door that opens out on to the rooftops.
On to the rooftops.
Well, that was unexpected. There was a non-slip walkway across the roof (Furtle had never been on a roof before) across to another door in an entirely different building (or buildings) from which extended further corridors and stairwells leading to bedrooms in yet further buildings. I’d love to see an architect’s 3D cross section of the hotel. Our room looked out of the first storey above the street just down from the entrance. Imagine, I suppose, clean and well appointed servants’ quarters in Gormenghast.
Furtle’s record of getting us into odd hotels remains intact.
That evening we wandered out for a look around the town (remaining within the mediaeval walled area, of course). We found a nice little pub, which I would imagine is crammed with students during term time. I had a pint of (I think) Biddlestone’s cider at a mere 8% and we listened to some interesting music, a sort of progressive punk… Of course, being in Canterbury, there was no 3G for my iPhone to latch on to, so there was no possibility of using ‘Shazam’ to find out what we were listening to. I asked a 23 year old Gandalf at the bar, but he just responded, “Sorry, Dude. I wasn’t listening, I was talking.” He did agree though,. That there was some strange music on the jukebox. Pity. Someone suitably obscure has lost out on a possible sale on account of us having no idea what we had heard.
Dinner was fish’n’chips for me and pizza for Furtle in a splendid little pub/restaurant around the corner down the (I think) High Street, next to the canal. We ate in the semi enclosed garden area, with huge amounts of ivy-like creeper along the rafters under the roof. We even found and drank the restaurant’s last remaining bottle of Kentish Red Wine, which was rather nice. We know it was the last, because we had to drop back to cheap Italian plonk after the bottle had dried up, despite our wish to consume more.
It turns out that after about 11.30pm until around 10.30am, central Canterbury is deathly quiet. Life retreats into the pubs etc and the streets are almost village lane, quiet. So quiet, in fact, that someone like me, who has spent the past few years living on main roads in London, it was difficult to sleep. Or so I thought. I completely missed the drunk at about 2am, wandering down the street shouting and swearing at everything he saw.
Next morning was, of course, rainy. Very rainy. So we went to look around the cathedral, which ranks as my favourite English cathedral and probably my favourite full stop. It is about 25 years since I’d been there previously and it turns out that the stone on the inside isn’t quite a pink-hued as I’d remembered, but then 25 years ago, it was sunny and I can see from the architecture that sun might give the stone a pink glow. It is light and airy, unlike many cathedrals made of darker stone, and reflects the internal dichotomy of the Church of England in being relatively shorn of icons, statues etc, but not entirely so. There are still a few to be had and not just tombs.
The candle that stands on the wide, empty spot marking the place inhabited for close on 300 years by the shrine to St Thomas of Canterbury (or Thomas Ā Beckett, as you may know him) surely couldn’t exist in another context. After Henry VIII ordered its destruction during the Reformation, it would surely have been replaced in later years in another country. But not here. The space in front of the altar remains, marked by an eternal candle.
Down in the crypt is the ‘Martyrdom’ marking the spot, I think, where Henry II lost his turbulent priest. It is a very modern-looking piece but I didn’t get to check precisely when the sculpture was installed.
After the cathedral, in which we spent an unprecedented two and a half hours, we went for a pub lunch where we had a humongous cheese sandwich, chips and (another) pint of cider. The remainder of the day was spent wandering around shops and such, with me dithering over the possibility of getting a tattoo (I didn’t).
Dinner was, against the odds, at Café Rouge. Initially we had decided to avoid chains and try local, but frankly (!) we fancied French cuisine and for a chain, Café Rouge is pretty good it has to be said.
Friday morning, we wandered a bit before catching a train home. We had wondered about staying just the one night, but I think we were right to make it two. I doubt we would have enjoyed wandering around for a full day lugging our bags around. As it was, we caught the 12.30 train and were home in time to sit in the pub garden for another pint of cider.
And that was all before the weekend started.