Canterbury is a city built around a single enormous fact, that cathedral, and everything else, the crooked lanes, the timbered pubs leaning into each other over the street, the students cutting through on bikes, arranges itself around it without much fuss. It's compact enough to cross on foot in the time it takes to finish a pint, which makes it an easy place to wander into somewhere new without really planning to.
But the real reason this corner of the country is worth covering properly is what surrounds it. East Kent is orchard and hop country, chalk downs rolling down to a coastline that does something different every few miles: Whitstable with its oyster shacks and shingle, Margate turned artsy and a bit wild, Deal quiet and handsome, Sandwich barely changed in centuries. Oast houses dot the fields between them, a reminder that this part of the world has been growing the raw stuff of beer for a very long time even where nobody's brewing with it any more. Follow the coast road out from the city in either direction and the pubs change character with the towns, seaside boozers giving way to farmhouse taprooms and back again. It rewards a slow drive with no fixed destination more than a straight line from A to B.
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