So, the other adventure I promised? Well, what is now two weeks ago, we trundled off on another bus journey to Dover with a stop over in Canterbury on the way.
Canterbury, as any Chaucer fans or students of British literature will know, has a large cathedral. Oh, hoo-fucking-rah! If you are a faithful follower of my slightly sarcastic wanderings, then you will know that I have been to more churches than I can remember. The United Kingdom (and the rest of Europe) has a wealth of cathedrals, abbeys, and whatever else large buildings with stained glass may be called. And I was taken to another.
My professor recommended finding some steps that it is possible to see where the stones have been worn away by the knees of crawling pilgrims. As there was no scavenger hunt provided by the Canterbury Cathedral, I decided to keep my eyes open. My friends and I found them and confirmed they were in fact the steps with one of the cathedral staff.
The stairs found, we descending into the crypt. There were no photos allowed and - even more unfortunately - no talking. I had a giggle fit. I am occasionally prone to them, often at inconvenient times. On a bus to Scotland for example, during a study session, and, every once in a while, in the middle of a class. This particular fit was brought on after my friend, Tom, and I opened a door which turned out to lead outside where a turkey (or something) was pecking around. When I returned to tell my other friends of the turkey sighting, I was simply overcome with emotion. I don't know. But I clapped my hands over my mouth and tried frantically to keep the giggles in as we wandered around the basement. I pulled myself together enough by the time we entered their room of Jewels to notice that a particularly ornate scepter had been crafted by someone named Jes.
After the cathedral, the professors were heading off to some monastery. I was not. My friends and I found lunch and then a bargain store with toys. My friend Amy became the proud parent of two aliens (Ortos and Diplam, I believe) in goo, while I left with some glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs. Canterbury concluded, giggles contained, and the bus boarded, I distracted myself on the drive to Dover with my new dinosaur toys.
I had one goal in Dover: to swim. I had emailed my professor the night before our trip and asked her if she thought there would be a place to swim. I told her that cold water invigorates the hearty New Englander in me. My professor didn't know, but I had packed my swim suit and was ready to plunge into the cold coastal waters.
The plan was to visit Dover Castle and then make our way to the cliffs. We got hopelessly lost. My professor has told us multiple times that she is no tour guide. Up to that point, she hadn't found the need to prove it to us.
We went the wrong way round the castle to an entrance that seemed to be closed. We tried scrambling up what appeared at first to be a path up the hill to the castle, but turned out to be slippery clay with nettles off the side. Met with failure, we wandered along a path in the woods, trying to find the entrance. After a classmate and one of my professor's daughters struggled up another steep incline to no avail, we decided there was nothing for it but to turn back. We walked past the bus parking lot along the road. The castle entrance was just around the corner.
By the time my professor had bought us our tickets, we only had around an hour and a half left. The beach and the cliffs were far away. I stumbled over to an elevated platform where the wind threatened to tear the flesh off my face and gazed down at the water.
I consoled myself by going on tour of the tunnels used to help evacuate mainland Europe in the first weeks of World War II, which were admittedly cool. But not cold like the water I had so wanted to swim in to remind my body what it means to have New England blood.
No comments:
Post a Comment