Cycling in Canterbury

It's been a while since my last post, so I'm breaking this report up into two sections. This one will cover what I did before heading to Scotland. You can guess what the next one will have...

On Tuesday night, I finally got in touch with my uncle, David Knight, who was in the UK enroute to the United States to see his son (Christopher) and daughter (Katie). We decided to try and meet in London the next day around 6PM. I also decided to head out to Canterbury to check out the Cathederal and other local historical monuments. Not that I knew about anything else that was there.

So, the next day, I headed out to the train station at St. Albens. It was about 10AM when I got there and bought my ticket to Canterbury. All week, the trains have been running slow and/or being canceled, apparently due to the heat. It's been about 30-35 degrees over here most of the time. Anyway, I finally got on a train at about quarter to 11, and started the journey to London Bridge station. After waiting there for about half an hour, I finally got on a train at around 12:30, destination Canterbury West station. By the time I got there, it was about 2PM. Working backwards, I figured I'd have to allow 2 hours to get back to London, which meant that in order to meet my uncle at 6PM, I'd have to leave at around 4PM. Leaving me a bit less than 2 hours in Canterbury. At this point, I decided that hiring a bike might be a good idea. And it was! I have rediscovered the coolness of riding bikes around on this trip. They're more flexible than driving or public transport, and way faster than walking. Unless they break down, of course. But more on that in the next post...

Anyway, I got a bike and a map, and headed to Canterbury Cathederal. It's pretty nice, as such things go. Pretty old, too. Not as old as Westminster Abbey, but it's mostly from around the 1600's. Some (small) parts are from the 1200's. It's most famous residents would probably be the Black Prince and Thomas a'Beckett. Can't tell you much about the Black Prince, other than he has a cool tomb, but a'Beckett was a martyr for his faith during the Protestant rebellions way back when. There's a memorial altar in the cathederal in his honour.

From the cathederal, I headed down to St Augustine's abbey, which is basically just a ruin now, and then rode through town, passing a couple of old buildings, including a Roman Guardhouse which now spans a road and is tall enough for double-decker busses to pass under.

About then I decided it was time to head back to the big smoke. Catching a train at about 4:25, the train seemed to be stopping at every station on the way to London. I finally got there at about 6:30, and gave my uncle a call. He was probably in the underground at the time, and his phone was out of range, so I just left a message saying I'd meet him at Picadilly Circus (where he'd done a lot of open-air evangelism in the past) and hoped he'd get the message. Sure enough, when I got there, he was waiting. We got a picture together in front of the Eros statue and then wandered around inner London for a few hours, just catching up and talking about various landmarks. A good time all 'round.

The next day (Thursday), I headed back into town. By this time, I'd seen most of the better known attractions in London itself, so I decided I would get a ticket to a West End production and check out the last museum I was interested in - the Natural History Museum. After standing in a queue for about 40 minutes to get half-price tickets for that evening, I headed off. The Natural History Museum houses tonnes of exhibits about the natural world. Things such as stuffed animals, skeletons, minerals, meteorites, plants, and (of course) dinosours. I checked out the dinos first, seeing such beasts as the triceratops, iguanadon and other big fellas. Unfortunately, the T-Rex had been moved to an exhibit where you had to pay to get in, and since I'd just paid for my plane tickets to Scotland, I wasn't feeling very generous at the time so I skipped it.

After that I headed back to Leicester Square and at about 7PM, I headed into the Albery theatre to see 'The Master Builder', starring Patrick Stewart (better known to Star Trek and X-Men fans as Captain Jean Luc Piccard or Professor Xavier, respectively). It was a drama, and a fairly small cast, but it was good to see Stewart in the flesh, and the production was good to boot. A good night out all 'round.

The next day, I got up early, repacked my smaller bags and headed of to Luton Airport to catch my plane to Glasgow. The details of my Scotish journeys I will leave until the next post. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment...