We Make Our Pilgrimage To Canterbury Cathedral

We travelled to Canterbury today in about 90 minutes southeast of London by train. This has been a "must see" destination for us since our arrival, owing to the presence there of Canterbury Cathedral, the center of the world Anglican Communion. Ash Wednesday seemed like the perfect day to undertake the journey. The Cathedral is an impressive pile of stone. It is actually the third cathedral on the spot, the previous two wooden cathedrals having burned. Still, the present one dates only from 1070, so there's still plenty of history on display. We saw an amazing ceiling in a chapel in the crypt. The ceiling paintings are original to the first construction of the building and once covered the lower level of the cathedral but were all whitewashed over time. This one escaped only because it was behind a support wall. It is hard to imagine how beautiful the lower portion must have been when it was all painted. Other sites at the cathedral were the site of the martyrdom of Thomas A Becket, the tomb of the black prince, including his original funeral clothing dating to back to 1376 and of course, the amazingly tall vaulted ribbed ceilings and miles of stained glass. Throughout our visit we were constantly given little mini-loectures by helpful volunteers. The whole experience was far different from what we encountered at Notre Dame in Paris just a week ago, in that it had less of the feel of a tourist gtrap and more of the feel of a house of worship. It was also far less crowded. While the distance to Canterbury makes it tough to see this UNESCO-designated world heritage site, it is worth the journey, and it is hard to imagine how the feel of the place would be changed if it were in the center of London, where the hordes of tourists would descend upon it daily.