Canterbury is a nice old cathedral city in southeast England. Every year 2.5 million tourists turn up to overrun the 30,000 locals and 8,000 students. In doing so they do considerable damage and disruption. Discourage them? No, the city needs them to pay for repairs from last year's visitors.
Canterbury isn't exactly a party town. The town itself has one nightclub and the locals consider that to be so disruptive they won't even consider having another. Instead everyone goes to the pubs, which annoys the locals. A lot of students live in the Home Counties and go home at weekends, whilst most day-trippers come in the week, so weekdays are busiest.
A selection of pictures of Canterbury.
The University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC) sits on top of a hill to the
north of town. It has a beautiful view down to town, which is reflected
in the slope of the hill you've just travelled up to get there. UKC isn't
exactly the world's best known university but at least in some subjects
(like mine) it does quite well. I left university in 1998. After three years I felt pretty tired of the place.
In September 1999 I return to UKC to study MSc Computer Science (Conversion) for another year. Seems I wasn't so tired after all, or maybe it's just plain better than working. Fortunately the university had gained another bar and a decent night club whilst I was away. Different parts of the city have changed over time, but the comments I made above (back in 1999) are still as true. The city is still quiet, nice and invaded by tourists every so often
So you want to visit Canterbury to see the Cathedral? It's truly beautiful.
But if you want to come to UKC here's some pointers:
| Good Points | Bad points |
|---|---|
| Good academic departments | Quiet weekends |
| Useful location | Weekends are dull |
| Good accommodation | Weekdays can be quiet |
| Six bars on campus | Only one decent nightclub |
| Excellent computing service | Can be boring |