Robyn writes: Another huge day - today is our last day in the Dover cottage and area (sad :( ) so we decided to head back to Canterbury to really have a good look. It proved amazingly easy to get to - straight onto one of their fairly major roads (A2), then as soon as we got off, we were at the "Park & Ride" bus terminal - you park your car for as long as you like, then catch a bus into the town centre and back - for only 3 pounds. Bargain! We were lucky enough to have a double decker bus going in, so could sit right up the front in the top of it for a brilliant view.

                                                 Scenery on our boat tour

Canterbury is amazing - many of the buildings in the city centre are still medieval, so you're walking past buildings that have been there for 800 years or more! The city was bombed by the Germans in 1942 though luckily they missed the cathedral, but there are several blocks of relatively new buildings due to this. We walked along the street through the new part and into the old, where we took a cruise on the River Stour - 8 tourists in a row boat with a very informative captain who rowed us and told us about the history of the places we were passing. It was really enjoyable and a nice way to orient ourselves a bit, plus gave us ideas of where to go later. Mind you, it's a tiny river, walled by bricks and only about 2 feet deep in most places! After the cruise, we visited the pilgrim's "hospital" - not a medical place, but where pilgrims used to stay, as in the original meaning of the word, "to welcome". An extremely old building, and one that was leaning alarmingly in several places! Some of the ancient buildings we've seen are like that - they bulge out like a convex circle or sit at an 80 degree angle -or at least definitely not the expected 90 degrees!

                                   It's impossible to get a photo that does the cathedral justice

After the hospital we had pasties for lunch then finally went to the cathedral. Canterbury Cathedral is huge and glorious - it seems to go on forever and the architecture is incredible. When you gaze up into the vaulted ceilings, it seems impossible that the building is nearly a thousand years old. We spent ages there looking at the tombs of the archbishops and a royal or two (the Black Prince, and Henry IV and his wife Joan). We went down into the crypts and of course saw the place where Thomas Becket was murdered and where his tomb lay until Henry VIII had it destroyed. You could actually see the dent in the stone floor around where the tomb was made by hundreds of years of pilgrims praying there. Some of the tombs had been defaced by Oliver Cromwell's men, and the cathedral is actually still missing some of the windows destroyed on his orders. Between Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell, there was a fair bit of destruction done to religious buildings over the years (and of course, let's not forget the odd contribution by Adolf Hitler!). We chatted to an nice female minister who told us quite a bit about the history and tombs. After several hours we finally came out and had a look around the exterior - two transept windows are undergoing major renovations at the moment - some have been removed at put on display in the crypt so we were able to get a really good look at them. Renovation is of course ongoing and a major expense for the cathedral, hence our 10.50 pound entrance fee - plus we were glad to dump our excess Aussie money in the international donation box! It is a wonderful place to visit and one I can definitely recommend.

By this stage it was afternoon tea time so we had some much needed caffeine in The Old Weaver's House restaurant - dating back to the 1500. Then we went to visit the "Greyfriars" garden and chapel, built by the Franciscan monks in medieval times. It's an amazing building as it is actually a house built over a bridge on an island in the Stour River, and is all that remains of their abbey (destroyed, of course, by Henry VIII). Time Team did a dig there in 2000 so we'll be hoping to catch that one day on the History Channel!

Then we made our way back to the bus stop and finally found our bus for the quick trip back to our car and to Dover. The weather has been good to us today - overcast but fine and not too cold. Definitely spring weather - there are flowers everywhere and whenever possible we ask a local what they're called. In the last few days we've learned yew hedges and my current favourite, laburnum - trees with beautiful small weeping yellow flowers.

Tonight we going to walk into town to one of the local pubs for our last night in Dover - tomorrow we are heading for Portsmouth for the next 5 days. Although it's only 200km, it would take us ages to get there by going along the coast, as we did to get to Battle yesterday, as that road goes through every tiny little village and can be extremely scary on the tiny, winding road with oncoming trucks, cars and buses and sometimes literally nowhere to go! Instead, we'll head northwest to one of the major motorways which seems like a long way out of our way but will be much quicker! Will come down into Portsmouth through some of the Downs country so that will be nice too.