It rained hard on Thursday and Saturday’s forecast isn’t much better. Today would be the best day for birding at Stodmarsh National Nature Reserve. It took us a half-hour for he eight-mile drive on England’s narrow, winding country roads but we found Stodmarsh without any problem.
It has been quite a while since we were out birding. Our only target bird was the Eurasian Woodcock but we weren’t counting on finding one. It was great to listen to the morning bird chorus and see some of our European favorites again but eventually the trails became too muddy and we called it a day.
Our AirBnB in the Canterbury suburb of Aylesham would be perfect except for the teeny-tiny fridge, the kind you might find in a dorm room. On the plus side, it has a washing machine, even though it took 3½ hours to wash a load.
On Saturday we told advantage of another plus—the park-and-ride to Canterbury costs only £4 round-trip including parking. The rain had stopped when we arrived but started again with a vengeance as we toured what remains of St. Augustine Abbey, juggling camera, umbrellas and English Heritage Audio Guides. This is another example of the hundreds of Catholic churches, abbeys and monasteries “dissolved” by Henry VIII after his tiff with Pope Clement VII. Judging by the coloring on some of the artifacts in the center, the Abbey must have been quite something at its peak in the Fourteenth Century. Canterbury Cathedral was just too much of a landmark for Henry to mess with and was simply converted to the Church of England.
The £24 entry fee to the Cathedral seemed exorbitant. We had visited once before and it isn’t part of the English Heritage system, so we just wandered around the Christmas fair. It may just be the “Scrooge Effect” but it didn’t hold an Advent Candle to the fairs in France and Germany.
