“Yes, we’re still on holiday! See if you can guess where we are today…”
Paddy and Plunkett started their tour by getting lost in this Beastie-sized lavender labyrinth. Mazes like these used to be laid out in tiles in front of the city’s cathedrals, and walking the paths supposedly helped you to rack up extra “pilgrim points”, which would fast-track you to the good parts of heaven.
This place really was a hotspot for pilgrims back in the day… people came from all over Britain, and even further afield, to visit the shrine of Thomas Becket. In fact, although it’s is now one of England’s smallest cities, in pre-Plague times it fell just inside the top ten largest, and was known throughout Europe as the “home town” of a number of recently-canonised saints of the era. The flood of pilgrims making this journey even inspired one of the earliest examples of real English literature, at a time when most literary works were in French or Latin.
Did you figure it out yet?
We’re in Canterbury! Here are the boys posing in front of Canterbury Cathedral, their first port of call after Plunkett managed to extract Paddy from the maze…
Canterbury Cathedral was founded in 597, and is now part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. The city itself dates right back to Paelolithic times, and contains landmarks left behind by a pick’n’mix of past residents – it seems like everyone from the Romans to the Normans made their mark on Canterbury!
While the cathedral is mostly a hive of activity, where a pair of Beasties risk getting trampled underfoot, there are quiet spots nearby where they can spend time exploring and posing for the camera. This shady herb garden has been planted in the old dormitory of the Cathedral – perfect for a picnic lunch!
And then they took a stroll to help settle down their hearty meal of… salad leaves. Well, if you want to spend the entire summer travelling, it’s important to save money where you can!
Plunkett spotted eight of these incredible lumpy plane trees as they wandered around the city.
He wanted to photograph all of them, but someone kept getting in the way…
Now boys, no fighting please!
Hopefully they’ll be back next Friday, with the next instalment of their magical monster mystery tour. And I’ll have more new Beasties to share on Tuesday too!
Enjoy your weekend!