Canterbury, Kent

Canterbury was loads of fun. I went down for the weekend with the King’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and so spent three days hanging out with some of London’s finest. To be honest, I didn’t even see that much of Canterbury. We spent Saturday at the beach at Broadstairs and the rest of the time crammed in a single room in the Canterbury hostel.

Getting to the hostel was a challenge in itself. Obviously I went and stood outside the wrong building for a good twenty minutes, wondering where in the hell all the G&S people were and how exactly one got inside reception. Turns out that reception was very easy to find once I’d shifted myself one door down the street. It was a fairly gorgeous building, to be fair – entirely unhostel-like, in my experience.

We spent Friday night quizzing it up, answering most questions with ‘W. S. Gilbert’ and the like. And, by some miracle, my team won. Brilliant. Was not my fault. We dined on pizza and Chinese food – with chips! The insanity continues.

Saturday was spent at Broadstairs, a lovely little seaside town. It was much nicer than Brighton. We ate fish and chips on the beach, and I even got a separate little container of mushy peas.

A singularly thrilling event was the sand sculpting competition. Genevieve and I may not have won, but we made a pretty damn amazing loveseat throne.

We were treated to a fabulous three-course meal on Saturday night, dressed in our finest back at the hostel. I lost spectacularly at chocolate poker soon afterwards, but there was enough welfare chocolate available for everyone.

I spent Sunday morning racing around Canterbury to catch a glimpse of the famous churches and, of course, the Cathedral.

Curiously, I think I saw more of Canterbury last night at the advent carol service at St Martins in the Field near Trafalgar Square, as the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered the sermon. (It was more Russian Orthodox than St Aidans, with all its talk of judgement, death and hell and the like, and the gratuitously creepy organ music more than suited the tone.)

I’m glad I managed to get out to Canterbury, but the real highlight of the weekend was the beach. And the people I stayed with weren’t too bad either. :)