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Ryght so [Arthur] sought, and his knyghtes, towarde Sandewyche where he founde before hym many galyard [sturdy] knyghtes—for there were the moste part of all the Rounde Table redy on tho bankes for to sayle whan the Kynge lyked.
Despite its historic and literary pedigree, I’m glad to leave the crammed city of Canterbury behind. I trundle my rolling suitcase past the busy tourists’ shops to the bus station, waiting in the glorious late-afternoon sun for the bus to Sandwich. At last, as winter-weary English folk have sung for centuries: Summer is icumen in [Summer is a coming in], possibly the oldest known English song (13th c).
No one seems to know when the bus is due, so I perch atop my suitcase and wait alongside the elderly women with their shopping bags and students in school uniforms heading home. The “queue” is long, and I’m nervous about not getting on the bus, but we all manage to squeeze on. After many local stops at country roads and corners in small towns, the bus pulls in at last to Sandwich.
The bus driver directs me to the New Inn, a pub where I have booked a room up on the second floor, one of the few accommodations in this small town. The entry door to the pub is stuck and when it gives way to my insistent pressure, I burst into a small-town pub filled with men enjoying a pint at the end of the workday. All heads turn my way to assess this unlikely addition to the scene.
My entry to the New Inn pub is a gender-inflected moment: pubs are still predominantly male spaces. I step up to the bar and, while waiting to get my key, easily chat with three young men and an older gent, asking for directions to the river. Their directions are hopelessly confusing, but it’s fun to have an excuse to be in a space that I would not normally feel able to enter on my own.
Despite the convoluted directions, I find my way to the peaceful River Stour and take an evening walk on this long, northern-summer’s evening.. In contrast to the intensity of York, London, and Canterbury, Sandwich is a quiet town and the tree-lined banks afford a solitary amble. The July sun is low in the sky and a brisk breeze with a slight tang of salt and sea disturbs the surface of the water.
The placid, curving river is lined with rushes and small pleasure boats; pathways, marshes, and small woodlands form part of the river’s geography.
In the town, there are quaint half-timbered, medieval houses and shops that lean over narrow cobble streets.
A surgeon’s office, I kid you not, is located on Butchery Lane.
Of course, Sandwich is not only an idealized town, but part of the modern British landscape. The town has an authentic ‘self-ness,”with practical shops that sell shoes and bread boxes, flowers and groceries. In the distance, I can see the massive cooling towers of a nuclear plant, but the juxtaposition of modern energy production doesn’t perturb the bucolic ethos and textual geography. Walking alongside the river, it is easy to feel immersed in a landscape with a far past, textual and geographic. I can still enter Malory’s text.
