After several last-minute panics – organising an alternative Channel crossing to P&O; new post-Brexit border bureaucracy complicated by Covid; and obtaining a data SIM that actually did accommodate roaming – we left the southwest door of Canterbury Cathedral in lovely spring sunshine.

We attended Choral Evensong yesterday at the Cathedral sung by the Boy Choristers and Lay Clerks. We were given a warm welcome by the stewards enthused by our pilgrimage. The music was lovely. We wondered if our friend John from St John Singers, who was once a Lay Clerk here, was live-streaming the service as he often does. We met another couple from Salisbury, actually Great Wishford where Tom fished for many years. She was a former midwife at the Salisbury Hospital where Julie worked. It turned out we had a number of mutual friends. They spoke about someone from Winterbourne Stoke who is walking to Rome to raise funds for the church roof. We’d heard about this from someone else. He’s already got to Besancon and is apparently returning later this year to continue with his wife. We must make contact.
We headed out of the walled city past the ruin of St Augustine’s Abbey followed by Canterbury Christchurch University. That’s a new one on us. Is it the Canterbury Art College of old?
As is often the case, navigation out of the urban area was slightly challenging, though eventually we found some signposting for the Via Francigena, which reassured us.

Wide-open countryside greeted us, mostly arable land now, but much evidence of former hop gardens.
After a few miles we came upon Patrixbourne with its fascinating Norman Church of St Mary. Patrixbourne is the crossing point of no fewer than four long distance paths, but the Via Francigena is clearly the most important.

Having become used to the warm spring weather the inside of the church was decidedly chilly. We were somewhat amused by the inadequacy of a tiny electric wall heater, which reminded us of previous attempts to address heating at our own church before an incoming cohort of parishioners got on, raised the funds and sorted it.

The main SW door was of particular interest with its ornate rounded Norman arch and thick oak door. Inside we signed the visitors book and stamped our pilgrim passports. An interesting and knowledgable visitor remarked on the skewed arch separating the chancel from the nave. Had it slipped over the years or was the horseshoe shape as it was built?

Reminders of the emerging spring appeared at every turn. With most hawthorn now fully in leaf, we saw newly green hazels and our first sighting of a cowslip!

A little later we came upon a patch of wood anemones in full bloom. What a show of spring!

West of Wymenswold we found what appeared at first sight to be a bench but on closer inspection was an artistically licensed relief depicting the route of the Via Francigena. Most of it looked pretty flat until the Alps rise almost vertically out of the landscape.

Quite daunting really!
At Wymenswold we discovered that its meaning in Old English was ‘the forest of the people of Wimel’ and that the local area was once extensively forested. There is evidence of Bronze Age barrows and other earthworks, including a more recent bomb crater dating from WW2, now blending into its surroundings. Today, all around Wymenswold there are huge fields under cultivation with larks singing above, and only the occasional small stand of trees. The pilgrim church is dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch, the patron Saint of pregnancy and childbirth. Again, the church seemed very large for the size of the village, presumably thanks to wealthy local benefactors.

Onwards we followed an undulating path along the edges of large fields before plunging back into a sunken path bounded by trees giving beautiful dappled light from the late afternoon sun.
The final stretch along tarmac roads and through paddocks linked to a riding stables brought us into Shepherdswell, our staging post for the day. As all the local B&Bs seem to have stopped trading we caught a train towards Dover, by luck with just 5 minutes to spare, and found our billet in River, a village on the outskirts of Dover. We will return to Shepherdswell by train tomorrow to pick up where we left off as we can’t start our first day on the Via Francigena by taking a shortcut!
