City circuit again

Will keep doing my favourite Canterbury city walk. Never exactly the same walk. But should i keep writing about it?

A circuit of Canterbury’s city walls, more or less. About two miles easily doable.

8 on Sunday morning, a good time. Few people and light traffic. Shorts and teeshirt. No raincoat. Patches of drying vomit. On other side of Wincheap man with a stick, even slower than me. Large truck makes circuit of roundabout to turn into A28. Station Road East. Footbridge over ring road, Pin Hill. Right onto city wall. Medieval wall on Roman foundation. Prefer to walk anticlockwise. Less traffic noise. Sun in eyes. Cooling breeze. High cirrus clouds. Man with dog. Dane John gardens below to left. Cyclist. Dane John mound. Bus station. Triangle bus. Broad street carpark by wall of cathedral precincts. Triangle bus passes on its way to Herne Bay. Leave main road and Broad Street becomes much narrower. Used to visit dentist here. Cross Northgate by former Jolly Sailor.

St Radigunds. Exposed wall by Parrot. Three probable rough sleepers with backpacks. Memories of folk music and morris dancing when it was Simple Simons. Millers Arms. Site of watermill. Abbots Mill project nature reserve. Soon to close for work to improve habitat and biodiversity. Path by river Stour, which splits into two main branches through Canterbury, with more channels connected with the watermills. Millers Field ecopark. Across bridge to Butterfly garden, full of flowers i can’t name. Pound Lane. Sudbury Tower in city wall, named after archbishop killed in peasant’s revolt. Unusually built of chalk, eroded maybe by passersby. View of tower of cathedral. Any walk in Canterbury is likely to give glimpses.

Footbridge by Cafe de Soleil, good pizzas. Path between river and North Lane carpark. Red phone boxes with union flags over glass.

Across front of Westgate, our only surviving medieval gate. Into formal gardens. Lawns and flower beds both sides of river. At least thirty mallards in river, mostly young ones. Jackdaw on lawn. Hollyhocks. A flower i can name. Man with white hair and watering can tends flowers on Burma Star memorial.

Toddlers Cove. Hug a beech. Sit and eat apple. Two girls play on red bus, the only equipment i remember from time here with sons. All else is newer. Noisy Rheims Way, seven neatly parked e-scooters by roundabout. Past Maidens Head, whose hanging baskets were recently stolen. Memories of folk music by Chris Skates.

Home, feeling good after walk. Rest of day mostly idle. Watched start of Tour de France femmes on Eurosport. Also finish of Tour de France, won by danish rider Vingegaard.