The Wife of Bath Was Kind of a Whore

On Saturday I took a school-run daytrip to Leeds and Canterbury. The first stop was Leeds, where we went to Leeds Castle. There was a pretty little scenic route up to the castle itself. We walked through a “duckery” (that’s actually what it was called) and saw ducks and peacocks. I’m not really an animal person (OK, I guess it’s a little stronger than “not really”), but the peacocks were kind of cool. I wish they had put their feathers up. There were also some swans on the water.


The castle was pretty on the outside but not really anything special on the inside because it had been refurnished so recently (people had lived there until the 1960s or ‘70s). The facilities also included a dog collar museum (who’s brilliant idea this was, I don’t know) and an aviary. Again, not really an animal person, but some of the birds were pretty enough. One of them, a cockatoo, talked with an English accent. The sign next to his cage said, “Oscar has been hand reared and believes he is a person. He is not happy being with other birds and demands constant attention from people.




We also tried out a maze that was set up on the grounds. Bad idea. I don’t know why I went in with the others; I get lost enough on my own and can not see how doing it on purpose could be fun. It made me very anxious. Stupid maze.

The bus took us a little further to Canterbury. This was a fun little nerdy trip because I got to see the Canterbury Cathedral, to which thousands of people used to go on pilgrimages after the murder of Thomas Beckett (inspiring, obviously, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales). On the walk over we saw a funny crooked house, which is like my personal Leaning Tower of Pisa since I probably won’t end up there any time soon.


The cathedral was very pretty, and we went in and saw the shrine to Thomas Beckett (last picture) and I think the place he was murdered. Besides that, there wasn’t much to do there. It’s a very cute, quaint little town, so we walked around for a bit before braving the London traffic on the way home.