[Reader, if you are just joining this journey, click on the “About” tab for context. The chronological posts begin in January 2026.]
Canterbury is in the general direction of Sandwich, and I couldn’t resist the minor detour. As a professor of medieval literature, I’ve often taught Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with its inimitable characters—the pious, the bawdy, and the loathsome. Who doesn’t love the Wife of Bath and her humorous tirade about her five husbands?
The justly famous Cathedral at Canterbury, rich in ecclesiastical history, is the destination of Chaucer’s motley pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. The opening of the Canterbury Tales form one of the most amazing poetic single sentences in English literature, ending with these lines:
And specially, from every shires end
Of Englonde, to Canterbury they wende
The hooly [holy] blissful martyr for to seke [seek]
That hem hath holpen [who had helped them] whan that they were seke [sick]
As the train “wends” its way from London to Canterbury, I review essays I am carrying by Arthurian scholars Drs. Peter Field, Thomas Crofts, Edward Donald Kennedy, Kevin Whetter, Ralph Norris, Masako Tagaki, and Takako Kato—wonderful medievalists who research the manuscript and printed text versions of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. We are on panels together at the Congress next week about the editorial and interpretive questions that arise as a result of the two versions of Malory’s Roman War episode.
This English book, Le Morte Darthur, has traveled to the quiet, lamp-lit offices of scholars in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the far west coast of America: to my home in Portland, Oregon. My wheelie suitcase is crammed with professional clothes and my briefcase is heavy with a laptop and work papers for the upcoming International Arthurian Congress in Rennes, France.
As I near Canterbury, the Kent countryside is dotted with woodlands and large oak trees that spread their broad canopies over the landscape.
~ ~ ~
Canterbury, like many English cities with cathedrals or colleges, is packed with tourists and lively groups of youngsters studying English for the summer. It makes for an intense crowd experience and shapes the space of these cities such that, at a certain level, they feel almost indistinguishable.
I stash my heavy bags at a tourist shop, then wander through the hushed twilight of the Cathedral interior, craning my neck to see the exquisite fan vaulting. English pilgrims came seeking healing from St. Thomas a’ Becket, once archbishop of Canterbury.
It is also the home cathedral of the 9th century Archbishop Siguric who was the first to record the itinerary of what is now known as the Via Francigena, the route between England and Rome that I am roughly following. For more on Siguric, see this post.
As I amble around the town, I happen to see a nondescript sign on a nondescript building: it reads: Watling Street.
Hey!
Do you recall Arthur’s injunction to the fleeing Roman ambassadors?
loke ye go by Watlynge Strete and no way [else]
Come to find out — Watling Street was one of the first and most important Roman roads in Britain! It once stretched across the width of the island running west from Dover through Canterbury, London, and on to Wroxeter in the northwest.
On the map above, Winchester, London, and Canterbury are circled in orange. The red line marks the length of Watling Street (we don’t know what the Romans called it; the name derives from Anglo-Saxon). From London it would be a straight shot to Sandwich, near the Roman fort at Richborough (it was a Roman road, after all).
No wonder the Roman ambassadors in Le Morte Darthur “so blithe [relieved] were they never” upon arriving at Sandwich! It is a formidable journey to cover from Winchester to London and then on to Sandwich in just seven days (almost 150 miles). Once they arrived, the ambassadors breathed a shaky sigh of relief and boarded their ships, leaving Britain behind.
To get from London to Canterbury to Sandwich to the ferry crossing to France without a car is not a simple journey. Train to Canterbury, local bus to Sandwich where I’ll spend the night. Train to Dover, ferry to Calais in France, rental car to Rennes. I realize I don’t have a map . . . just a copy of Le Morte Darthur with its Roman War itinerary as a guide.
For Further Reading:
John Higgs, Watling Street: Travels Through Britain’s Ever-Present Past (2017)
Walking Britain’s Roman Roads: Watling Street (You can watch for free with commercials or buy the episode for 99 cents.)
[If you want to “like” this post but don’t have a WordPress account, you can put a plus sign in the comment box.]
