Day 37 Chilham to Canterbury: Pilgrims' Welcome and Cathedral Song

A Happy Arrival at Canterbury

For an OS map of today's walk click here.

Today's walk to Canterbury would in some ways be the culmination of the spiritual aspect of our "Pilgrimage of Thanksgiving," given that Canterbury has historically been a pilgrimage destination and Dover has not. We were also being met by clergy at the cathedral, which added to our anticipation and Ken's desire to '"just get to the cathedral" as we walked the seven miles from Chilham.

Passing through Orchards West of Chartham Hatch

We had good weather; it was fairly warm, sunny at times, with one brief shower while we were indoors. We began with a long uphill walk to the village of Old Wives Lees (it is uncertain why it's called that, though there are several theories), and then throughout the morning our path took us through primarily agricultural country: fields, bits of forest, many large orchards, and at one point, the remains of an iron age fort (Bigbury, just east of Chartham Hatch). There we saw coppicing using chestnut trees, which we hadn't seen before—the trees are cut close to the ground so that they produce multiple thin trunks which are then harvested.

As we neared Canterbury, Ken wanted to approach it by way of the Stour Valley Path, which he thought would be a pretty way to enter the city via the River Great Stour, with the Westgate Gardens just across the river. However, our guidebook promised a "splendid" view of the cathedral from a point on the North Downs Way, so we took it, going up and down hill a few times, entering the outskirts of Canterbury only to find that the "view" could only be obtained by crossing into a traffic island into the middle of an extremely busy A-road. Sigh. We walked into the city, passing St. Dunstan's church, a Pilgrims' Way landmark. It was, of course, locked.

Christ Church Gate, Canterbury Cathedral

It is always a shock to the senses to enter a busy city after being in the countryside for days on end. We wanted a quick lunch, so bought some pasties at the Cornwall Pasty Co. They were okay, but we were chagrined to come across a crepe stand shortly afterwards—we love crepes!

We walked to the cathedral, and at Christ Church Gate asked for Canon Clare, with whom we had corresponded since we discovered that Canterbury Cathedral would have a special welcome and blessing for pilgrims. The woman at the gate didn't know about Canon Clare, but said, "You're pilgrims?" When we said we were [that felt a bit strange!—Ken], we were let in and directed to the welcome centre, where they phoned Canon Clare to come and meet us. She came soon after and gave us a warm welcome, asking about our journey and taking us into the cathedral. She pointed out a few special things in the cathedral, took us through the pilgrims' tunnel (originally created so that the medieval monks wouldn't have their services disturbed by the constant stream of pilgrims to St. Thomas Becket's shrine) to the martyrdom site, and then led us to the chapel in the crypt. She prayed a blessing on us, gave us a copy of the prayer, and chatted a bit more with us. She was a lovely person, and we really felt honoured to be so welcomed and prayed for at the cathedral.

Canterbury Cathedral Quire, Looking East

We looked around the cathedral a bit before the evensong service, which is at 3:15 p.m. on Sundays. Then we found a place in the quire for the service, and saw Canon Clare again, who had mentioned that she would get us a card or stamp related to our journey. She had printed out a special certificate for us, describing our journey from Barnstaple to Dover, going along the Pilgrims' Way from Winchester to Canterbury. We were touched by this, and are looking forward to framing this certificate to be near the one indicating our completion of Wainwright's Coast to Coast walk in 2008. 

At the beginning of the evensong service, there was a general welcome to guests and pilgrims, and a special welcome to us, indicating where we were from and how far we had walked. That was pretty special, to be welcomed in a cathedral service. The service itself was beautiful, with many attendees and a choir of men and boys singing praises to God.

We wandered around the cathedral for quite some time afterwards, looking at the many monuments, side chapels, beautiful carving and statuary. Around closing time we ended up near the crossing at the entrance to the quire. The tourists had thinned out by then. Ken told me to wait there, and he went down and talked with a verger who was standing nearby, showing people the way out. Ken came back and said he had permission to sing one verse of "Amazing Grace" in the quire, "as long as the verger didn't know anything about it." So we both went into the empty quire, and Ken sang a verse while I accompanied with harmony. His voice filled the cathedral. We left the quire to see two tourists about to go in, and the woman said, "That was brilliant!" The verger said that it was nicely sung, and said, "You probably didn't know that the quire was miked, so that you could be heard throughout the whole cathedral." We didn't know. As Ken says, after singing praises to God in Canterbury cathedral, what could top that? A truly once in a lifetime experience to end a very special day.

24,556 steps, 18.417 km, 744 cal
OS getamap measured distance: 7.94 mi (12.77 km)