As most of you know, I am totally fascinated by an Old English king: Alfred the Great. I am learning Old English (including the runes), read everything from and about King Alfred that I can get my hands on, and last summer, I made a trip through southeast England, looking for traces of my hero. For the Dutch travel website Reismuts, I reported on this varied journey, in text, music and photographs. This is a translation of the first blog of this series, about Canterbury.

Of course I had heard some tales about Canterbury – a pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages, surrounded by Ancient walls (originally built by the Romans), that encircle its medieval center of cobbled streets and timber-framed houses. But I had never been there – until last summer. My stay in Canterbury allowed me to connect to the Alfredian world in a new way. This blog post is a reflection of my findings and the second of a series of four.