GARDEN OF ENGLAND
Kentish trails call for Lynne Maxwell’s own pilgrim’s progress along a couple of long-distance routes
On awarm June day with patchy clouds acting as umbrellas occasionally shielding them from the sun, four trail runners agree to explore the final section of the Pilgrims’ Way and wend their way to Canterbury.
In the manner of Geoffrey Chaucer‘s The Canterbury Tales, each will get a chance to share their story, starting with The Scribe (that’s me!).
Several decades ago I became a scholar, to use Chaucerian parlance, at the University of Kent in Canterbury. I’m excited to be making this personal pilgrimage into the past, to a place where the foundations were laid for friendships and skills that have been cornerstones of my life since. Looking at the inside cover of my copy of The Canterbury Tales with its youthful scrawl of ‘L. Barber’ I suspect this was required reading matter for my degree in English and Drama.
Chaucer’s band travelled in April but early pilgrims often made the journey in winter, to arrive in the city on December 29, the date of Archbishop Thomas Becket’s murder in the cathedral in 1170. This is the seed that started the pilgrimages and an event still commemorated there on the anniversary with a re-enactment during evensong.
But even before the demise of the “troublesome priest,” pilgrims were inspired to make the journey to Canterbury after the death of St Augustine, who arrived there in AD597 (597CE if you prefer) and established an abbey.
An ancient local Celtic track existed before the arrival of the Romans in Britain but they recognised its greater importance in linking London not only with Canterbury but Dover, the coast and their wider empire. Trackways such as this were often replaced by more direct, metalled roads such as Watling Street, now part of the A2, which is most likely the route taken by Chaucer’s cavalcade.
As a result, the 90-mile-long Pilgrims’ Way is not based on a single path bu
