And then, as now, holidays were above all a chance to cut loose, to eat, drink and make merry. If anything, his pilgrims were the medieval forerunners of today’s package tourists. As the Wife of Bath makes clear, even a holiday fling was not out of the question.So here, in a commemorative spirit, are some tales that Geoffrey Chaucer did not write. But first, in the traditional terminology:I prey yow for your curteisye, that ye n’arette it nat if I am unmanerly of speche, and speke not hir words proprely.The most Chaucerian way to go would be on horseback. This was the journey, after all, that gave rise to the term: to canter.

But there are few green fields left along the pilgrim’s traditional way between the cathedrals of Southwark and Canterbury, and even the fastest rider would be several horsepower short of what is required on a modern motorway.Anyway, hardly anything remains of that original route. The Tabard Inn, where Chaucer’s pilgrims roared the night away before the start of their trip, is now a newsagent and a sandwich bar on the corner of Talbot Yard, a wrecked inlet off Borough High Street. And though the A2 to Canterbury still follows the arrow-straight trajectory of the ancient Roman Watling Street (and is even called Watling Street off and on) it has largely been supplanted as a route by by-passes and motorways. With reason: I trundled slowly down Watling Street this week, and it took nearly four hours.In Chaucer’s day, traffic-calming schemes, cones and helpful signs saying “Delays possible” were rarer than wolves. South of Bean, near Greenhithe, I was warned of width restrictions, which might have been awkward for the Abbott, but which the Fiat slipped through without mishap. And the motorway near Rochester carried adverts for “Free recovery”, which even St Thomas never offered: miraculous cures, even in the Middle Ages, didn’t come cheap But the traffic… if Chaucer were able to revisit, he could hardly resist giving the last, slow queue on to the ring road an epic name: the Canterbury Tailback.The traditional Canterbury trail stopped overnight at Deptford, Rochester, Sittingbourne and Faversham (regional winner of the England in Bloom awards).

It is recalled in certain roads in Southwark – Tabard Street, Pilgrimage Street, Becket Street, Pardoner Street. But otherwise we can only imagine what Chaucer’s travellers would have made of the urban jumble. They would have averted their eyes from the swirl of heretic messages – Sikh temples and Muslim mosques, the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministry, the Christ Faith Tabernacle, the medieval-sounding Psychic Fayre. They would have wondered at the bizarre 20th-century language responsible for Toys R Us, Cards N Things, Carpet Rite and the Discount Flooring Centre; and would have been baffled by the promise of a “pizzaburger”.The inns at which they stayed were rough and ready: they’d have killed for a Travel Lodge or a Little Chef. The Chequer of Hope in Canterbury had 100 beds, but slept 600 – a strategy favoured today only by saucy seaside resorts in Ibiza.

But these were bawdy times: people didn’t mind sharing a bed. A modern marketeer might well be able to put together a sexy holiday package for 14th-century pilgrims, and call it Club 1380. And when it came to her hairdo, the Wife of Bath would have been spoiled for choice: Phenomenal Hair, Debonair, Sophisticuts. She could have had a new style every day, just to tease the Knight.The underlying point of the medieval pilgrimage was to seek intercession from the “holy martyr”, St Thomas à Becket, murdered on the King’s orders in 1179 by four knights who strode into the cathedral and hacked at his head. Immediately, reports of miracles began to circulate through the medieval world.

Mad Henry of Forthwick was led screaming to the tomb, and walked out with his wits restored. As supplicants began to wend their way to Canterbury, the miracles multiplied. Blind Robert of Essex was en route when he was run over by another blind man on horseback. He pleaded to the martyr, suddenly found that he could see, and sprinted the rest of the way. And so the leading Faith Zone of the last millennium was born. Merchants sold relics (holy water, mixed with the saint’s blood) and sins were forgiven – for a price.