After a windy passage on the PNO ferry, B1O and teachers Susan Janssen, Bart van de Bergh and Lisanne Bosch arrived in Dover on May 11th.

At about 14.30 pm they were dropped off at Canterbury Youth Hostel, where they checked in and got ready for a varied programme in Canterbury.

The sightseeing walk towards the city centre took about one hour. Since the River Cruise, next on the programme, wasn’t booked until 16.45, the pupils had some free time to do their souvenir shopping or to interview some more people (they were supposed to do at least 3 interviews during the trip and they had started with this assignment on board of the ferry).

The River Cruise was lovely (not in the least because of the wonderful weather!). The rowing guide told a lot about the history of Canterbury in a rather humouristic way.

At 18.00 the group gathered at Marlowe’s Restaurant, where most of the pupils (including the teachers) enjoyed a typically English ‘Fish & Chips’. To bridge the time till the next activity on the programme, the Ghost Walk, the pupils were sent off in small groups to take their ‘most typically English’ picture! The winning group of this photo contest will be announced at het TTO-presentation evening in June.

Ms Broom, guide during the Ghost Walk, was waiting for B1O in front of the wine bar in St Margaret street. She told the pupils about the different types of ghosts as well as the famous ghosts of Canterbury like Nell Cook and Thomas à Becket (Thijs played his part as dying Thomas à Becket convincingly!). Although Ms Broom’s stories had been quite interesting, the pupils were happy to go back to the Youth Hostel now, since they were tired and had got rather cold.

Back at the Youth Hostel, the pupils spent some time together in the lounge before they were sent to their rooms to get ready for the night (not all pupils understood the meaning of “Get some sleep, guys, tomorrow will be a busy day!!”).

Saturday morning started early, at about 7.30 am (for some pupils even earlier because they had set their alarm wrongly). Since a group of German students had invaded the dining room to have breakfast and there was not enough room for two groups, B1O went outside for some morning exercise. After this refreshing activity (not appreciated by everybody: too cold, too tired, too hungry!!) they all enjoyed their English breakfast.

At 9.00 B1O set off for Canterbury Cathedral. Inside the cathedral the pupils worked in small groups on several assignments like finding details in the cathedral and placing their position on a map and answering questions about statues, paintings and glass stained windows (for some pupils this was quite heavy because of lack of sleep!).

After this rather serious part of the programme, the group was taken to Christ Church University by Richard Hart for a theatre workshop, which was a relaxed end of the programme.