Eish! London 18 July

Saturday, 18 July
We saw Leeds Castle, Canterbury Cathedral and the White cliffs of Dover this weekend. The highlight of the trip was a nutty old historian tour guide - the information in his head was phenomenal! The guide said that according to his knowledge the reason British folk began drinking more beer than water was because back in the day (from about the1500s if I recall correctly, although I reckon it was probably earlier than that) the water was full of parasites and the like, so they drank beer because it was the healthier option! From the London pub culture I have seen thus far: I reckon the centuries old habit has stuck.

It was great to go on the tour, but the traipsing around and the time spent sitting on the coach was exhausting; and everything did seem really rushed as we dashed around according to coach leaving times. Perhaps hiring a car and traveling around like we did for Stonehenge is a better option, but then you don’t get the entertainment and knowledge of the tour guide. Another interesting fact was that if a pub has ‘bells’ in its name, then it’s located near a church (nothing to do with a brand of whiskey at all); and the number of bells in the name of the pub is the equivalent of the number of bells in the church tower nearby; according to our tour guide anyway.

Leeds Castle - undoubtedly the coolest castle I have been to yet. The one Queen was held hostage there, with a genuine moat and gorgeous lands and gardens - shame, what a hard life! Not. I would be held captive there any day. I would sit on the stone window seat for hours staring out of the medieval arched window and write to my hearts content. Yes, if you forget about the wars, prisoners and deaths, it is quite a romantic castle, even if the staircase was constructed to resemble a snake.

From Leeds we went to Canterbury; gobbled down a mini-picnic lunch and wandered around the Cathedral (which was really impressive), but I must admit I find it more humbling and reverent to visit cathedrals when they aren't inundated with weekend tourists. The interesting ala-tour-guide tale in this place: apparently the guy (Stephen Langton) who wrote the Magna Carta was buried in the Cathedral, but when one of the Queens was designing and decorating her space in the Cathedral his body was in the way, so they shoved him out of the way and now his feet are outside and his head is inside the Cathedral (I couldn’t tell if the tour guide was serious or not on this one, nor did I see his head or feet for ducking the tourists). After whizzing through the Cathedral we wandered Canterbury’s maze of lanes, and I bought a copy of some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in a little hidden bookstore to mark the moment.

The guide was genuinely the major highlight of the tour for me - so much knowledge delivered in the driest humour I’ve ever heard. He seemed to be in his 60s and had these long conversations with himself over the microphone. Highly amusing; like: "Yes ... we are passing some cows on your left, lovely grazing cows on the left." in a languid voice, as if nodding off into all the intricately woven stories in his mind. “Yes, there was great mystery around that king, a great mystery.” I found him exceptionally funny, but I was often the only one laughing. “Yes, the Saxons arrived and when they built up areas they would end them with sex, like Wessex and Sussex; that would make the east, hmm, yes: Essex.”