That’s inside Canterbury cathedral of course. I guess this felt like the first “real” day as I was starting away from home and as I knew I would end the day in France. Here’s the map
I don’t remember why the map record drops out after Canterbury but it does ring a vague bell. I am pretty sure I was using a Garmin to see my speed and cadence and record the journey but it wasn’t showing my route, for that I was using Gurgle maps on my ‘phone and sometimes my laptop.
Somewhere outside Canterbury I stopped to buy some fuel in a little village shop and was a bit thrown when a woman probably in her 40s walked in wearing a, to me, bizarrely revealing pair of dungarees and stinking, probably far more than I was, of sweat. That seemed an odd presentation for a rather “nice” little village but it was immediately clear that she was well known and liked (in an entirely friendly, non-sexual way) in the shop. I realised I sometimes have rather prejudiced expectations of English village life! I guess that was my first realisation that I would see much on the journey ahead that would be new to me and not just sights but also insights into different ways of life.
Then on to Canterbury. I remember the Cathedral towering over the town on the lovely cycle route in along the river. It seemed straight out of Constable’s painting. I had assumed that I had already been there as we went to many of the great British cathedrals as children. However, I quickly realised I had never seen it before: it would have been a very long journey from Warwickshire. I loved the town with its funny mix of locals and tourists and tourist shops and buskers. There were many medieval buildings beside the cathedral and the peregrines nesting in the cathedral swooped around. I managed to spend an hour so in the cathedral so impressed that mostly wanted to just to soak up the glories, vowing to go back and take lots of better ‘photos some time. I haven’t yet so this really does it little justice. You can click on the images to get them full size and there are little arrows almost invisible in the middle of the right and left of the image that allow you to scroll through them. Give them time to load, this is not a super fast web server.
Then it was on to Dover where I had another meeting, this time with Dutch man probably in his late 60s or 70s who got chatting to me as we were, I think, the only two cyclists kitted out with tents. He had spent the previous month cycling in Yorkshire and said it had rained every day (I think that seemed plausible then, a weird thought now in our heat and drought stricken July/August 2026). He was very cheerful and happy despite rain and was pretty ambivalent about returning to the Netherlands.
I knew it would be evening by the time I arrived and had booked into very cheap “box room” accommodation where you used a code to get in, my first experience of such things, now so familiar I guess. I remember really struggling to find the place and riding round in circles as I tried to find the address in Gurgle maps as it went dark. That’s horribly clear if you zoom in on the map above!
I am pretty sure a kindly couple walking their dog worked out what I was seeking and pointed me in the correct direction, not at all where the place was in the map.
I got in (a relief) but it seemed to be in a rather down at heel bit of Calais so I didn’t fancy leaving the bike even well locked up outside and there was nowhere to lock the bike in the tiny corridors so here we are…
I think I slept like the proverbial log.
[Created 3.viii.2026.]