CanterburyPilgrims
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The Ethelbert Way
This route is Canterbury's Muxia or Finisterre. If you walk the Camino to Santiago de Compostela, you have the option to carry on to the sea, to the lands' end. In a similar fashion and with a historical root, you can do the same when you walk pilgrimage to Canterbury and continue on to the North Sea at Reculver. There you will find the ruin of the old church, the site of a Roman fort, a great cafe, and a nice pub called the King Ethelbert Inn.
From Reculver, you can catch a bus back to Canterbury or enjoy a lovely clifftop walk into Herne Bay where there is a train and bus station, with regular buses to Canterbury. The bus numbers are the 600 or 601.
Historical Basis for the Route
This route links Canterbury with Reculver where King Ethelbert retired after leaving St Augustine’s Priory in Canterbury. King Ethelbert was a pagan who ruled over Kent and the East of England up to the Humber river. He was believed to have been born in around 560 BCE and died in 616 BCE, and converted to Christianity after marrying his wife, Bertha, a Merovingian Christian princess who had come from Tours in what is now France. It was Bertha who invited Augustine to Kent through Pope Gregory, and it is believed that King Ethelbert was buried in the Monastery of Saint Augustine’s Priory in the porticus of Saint Martin's church in Canterbury. It was with Ethelbert’s authority that Saint Augustine established the cathedral at Canterbury and later at Rochester.
