W

ith the plain speaking and rather raunchy Wife of Bath to the romantically naïve Knight, Geoffrey Chaucer’s characters in The Canterbury Tales certainly breathed life and colour into the pilgrim’s experience.

In the historic city of Canterbury, you can meet some of Geoff’s larger-than-life-characters and follow in the footsteps of the thousands of real-life medieval pilgrims who made their way from London to St. Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral.

Make your first foray into Chaucer’s world a fun one at  The Canterbury Tales attraction. Inside the historic St. Margaret’s Church, Chaucer and his merry pilgrims are waiting to take you back to the C14.

As they guide you through a series of suitably dingy period rooms, you’ll experience medieval life right down to the stench of the streets. The witty characters will teach you about the dangers faced by pilgrims, what a medieval traveller would wear, and even how they were cured from diseases.

By the time you finish you’ll have developed an understanding of just what a pilgrim has to go through over 800 years ago.

Once you’ve emerged from the Middle Ages back into modern day Canterbury, it’s your turn to make your way to the Cathedral and the site where Archbishop Thomas Becket was gruesomely murdered in 1170.

Pay your respects at the shrine and then think what would a medieval pilgrim do? Walk back to London or stop for a tipple or two?