High Street

The GuardianJul 20

A Canterbury trail: my pilgrimage from the cathedral to the white cliffs of Dover

After exploring the cathedral city, I battled the heatwave while walking to the Kent coast on the Via Francigena Canterbury for Evensong. Is there a more delightful cluster of syllables in the English language? Old English, I should say, as æfensang comes from that tongue, an update on the Latin-derived “vespers”. But whatever you call the service, Canterbury Cathedral does it in style. How bea…