A Canterbury Sunset

Greetings for the last time!

Before I go too far in this last entry, I want to personally thank each of you for reading. I'd like to give special thanks to the folks at SmithMoore who read along and helped assure my mom I was alive!

First, I'll talk a little bit about Canterbury (where I spent the last five days). It's a town in South East England very near to the coast (some people I met had walked from the coast in a morning), and has been around for a long time. Much of the architecture is still Roman, with a large amount of medieval construction as well. Luckily, most everything survived the World War II bombings.

So, about the town: it is a traditional walled city, and the wall still exists around most of the town. You can walk along the wall, and there are only two or three ways into the city (where the gates are). Inside, the streets are layed out pretty much the way they were in the past (though with modern stores), and are all cobblestone. The center of the city is the massive and beautiful Canterbury Cathedral, built between 1150 and 1400. It's a really stunning building, and absolutely huge. (Much bigger than Notre Dame or St. Paul's in London, for example). The Canterbury Cathedral is the mother church for the entire Anglican Communion, so I did some good research there.

Canterbury (well, the pilgrimage people make to Canterbury) is also the impetus for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and there were some very cool re-enactments and demonstrations on the streets the Saturday I was there. There are also a good number of interesting gardens (which really means park), as well as a very old castle (from the early middle ages), which is partially decrepit. All in all, I loved Canterbury, which was very different than Nottingham.

My last evening in Canterbury, I went to the top of the Dane John mound (the highest point in town and a Roman burial mound) to watch the sunset for the last time in the official research part of my travel. My experience has truly been amazing; looking back, I couldn't imagine how things might have gone better or smoother. In the end, I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity, and hope to share it with as many of you as possible over the coming weeks and months.

So, in the end, webale muno (thank you in Rutooro) and Hamba gaschli (loosely "go well" in Zulu). I'm most grateful to all of you for your support.

Will