Battle to Canterbury and St Augustine's Abbey

St Augustine's Abbey Canterbury

I had to have serious words with Gaby Garmin today. After my adventures at Battle, I set her for Canterbury thinking we would just stick to main roads and get there relatively simply. But, oh no... I think I traversed ever single little back road between Battle and Canterbury.... she kept taking me on these dinky little back lanes that were so obscure they didn't even come up as a road name - just ROAD.... And many of them were virtually one lane only - was a bit stressful for a while. But eventually we turned up in Canterbury. So I guess it's not all bad.
I've been in to look at the settings to see if I have set her for backroads only, but it  doesn't seem to be...  I've made a few adjustments, so I'll see if that helps.

I have to admit I'm missing my Google maps because I'm not using any data. Very tempted to buy a cheap phone over here, just for that.

I was also worried about the end point of the journey as I'm actually staying in the grounds of the Cathedral in  the Canterbury Cathedral Lodge. But the instructions of how to get into the Cathedral grounds seemed a little complicated so I have to admit I was bit anxious about it all. Didn't need a back road tour of Kent to calm me down!!!!

View of Cathedral from my window

Anyway, arrived safely and found my way into the grounds and have checked in and all is good.

There are 2 things I wanted to see here in Canterbury. One is very obviously the Cathedral. But the other is St Augustine's Abbey. Yesterday at Pevensey I bought an International Visitor's Heritage pass and it allows me to go for free into many different sites (This morning at Battle was free).

So when I arrived, I asked the girl at reception what time did they both close. And the Cathedral closed at 3.30pm so that was a dead loss, but she said The Abbey closed at 4pm. So I shot over there on foot only to find it closed at 6pm... Anyway, I was there so I had my look around. As I said at the start of today's blog, there's so much I want to do and so little time. I think I'm beginning to realize I'll have to start prioritizing stuff as I can't do it all!

The Abbey was lovely. No audio tour this time, just lots of signs... Pity - because I really enjoy the audio tours...

St Augustine was asked my Pope Gregory to come and bring Christianity to the English

If you zoom in on this pic it says it all in  nutshell.

Here's a few sample pics

Grave of St Augustine

The crypt in the Church

All very interesting but I was a bit tired after a very long day.

There was only one thing left to do at the end of a very tiring day.....

Thirsty work!

So that's what I did... and now I'm going to bed. Another big day awaits me tomorrow. But aren't I lucky!!!