For our first trip of 2018 we decided on a long weekend trip to the Canterbury CCC site.

We were very lucky with the weather – a rare sunny weekend in between the many snow showers of the winter.

We drove down on Friday (16/2), found the site just to the east of the town centre and found a nice pitch near the entrance.

The site was about 20 mins walk from the town centre or a short bus ride. We wandered in with Ruby and our first stop was at St Martins church , the oldest church in continuous use in the English-speaking world. Parts of the building date back to Roman times.

Canterbury is where Christianity was first established in the UK. It was brought here in the 6th century by a french princess called Bertha who eventually married the Anglo Saxon King Ethelbert. Here are the statues of them keeping an eye on the city:

A few years later Augustine, a monk from Rome arrived, based himself at St Martins and set about spreading the word.  With the support of the King he built the Abbey (almost next door to St Martins) and eventually the Cathedral which is the centrepiece of the city today.

All these building are part of a World Heritage site. Our next stop was at the ruins of the Abbey  now managed by English Heritage (and fortunately dog friendly!).

After this we continued into the town centre which is full of interesting  historic buildings and unusual shops (and pubs!).

We decided that visiting the cathedral itself would be a challenge with Ruby and also quite expensive so we’ll save that for another visit.

The following day we took a walk along the walls of the city which provides some excellent views.

We’d certainly recommend the site and city for a short break and would be happy to go back in the not too distant future.