We woke this morning to the sound of the cathedral bells. We had breakfast in the conference center refectory which looked out on to a lovely patio. We then went over to the church for some thorough examination before the crowds came in. There were some interesting sights. One was the tomb of the "Black Prince", Edward Plantagenet.
Another was to find some of the original wall paintings. We tend to think of the Middle Ages as very gray and black, but the truth is that medieval people loved color. All those statues on medieval cathedrals were painted bright colors and the walls were covered with frescoes. Canterbury Cathedral probably looked something like the Tiki Room at Disneyland. Most of those paintings were destroyed by the Puritans during the Civil War, and the rest were simply allowed to deteriorate. So it is pretty astonishing to find some still visible.
After we finished exploring the Cathedral, John wanted to go to one of Canterbury's tackiest tourist traps, The Canterbury Tales. This place is straight out of Knott's Berry Farm - except for the nod to English literature. You walk through the little rooms listening to a retelling of parts of Chaucer's stories while different life-size figures light up and occasionally move.
John had read about this farmer's market in Canterbury where a top chef prepared meals from meat and produce sold there. The always helpful tourist office showed us where it was on the map, and after checking out of the hotel we found our way there. It is a little out of the center of town right next to one of the railway stations. The market itself is not that big.
We were not famished, but the food looked so good we stayed for lunch. It was probably the best meal we have had on the entire trip, and at 42 pounds, was not that expensive.
Back in the car, we set course for Sissinghurst. This was the house of writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson. While the house itself is quite small compared to Knole, where Sackville-West grew up, it is famous for one of the most celebrated gardens in England. The "white garden" that Sackville-West designed has been copied thousands and thousands of times. Alas, we found it in less than stellar condition. The southeast of England has been hit with a long hot dry spell, and the garden was not provide with irrigation to deal with this problem. The lawns were marked with big brown spots, and many of the plants were obviously looking parched. But there were some beautiful moments, and parts of the house, particularly the tower, were nice.
And here is a view of some of the garden rooms from the top of the tower.
We were not quite ready to head back to London, so we asked Ken to chart us a course for the Rye, a small village on the English Channel. Rye is best known as the town where Henry James lived and wrote his most of the later novels. You know, the ones where the sentences go on and on and on and on.... This was his house.
Rye also had one other famous writer, Radcliffe Hall. Her 1928 book The Well of Loneliness with its vague suggestion of a relationship between two women outraged the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin which had it banned as a "danger to the well-being of the nation."
We were struck by how dramatic the tides must be at Rye. Looking at the boats stuck in the mud of the river flats, both John and I recalled seeing the same thing at the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.
After a couple hours we had seen everything there was to be seen in Rye, so we headed back to London.
