Canterbury packs its best free assets into one square mile: a no-charge civic museum, gardens on the Roman ramparts and a 13th-century friary over the river. Add market picnics and a woodland trail to the sea, and three days cost less than one cathedral ticket.
Free riverside park inside the city walls, open dawn to dusk all year. The Great Stour splits around the lawns and the hollow Oriental plane tree planted around 1800 has a 7.6m girth. Ideal spot for a supermarket breakfast.
Canterbury's museum and art gallery at 18 High Street, free to enter Mon–Sat 09:00–17:00 and Sun 10:00–17:00. Victorian collections, Kentish painters, Roman finds from the city, plus free toilets, free wi-fi and a warm reading room.
Free public gardens laid out along the Roman wall, with a Norman-era burial mound climbed by a spiral path to an 1803 monument. From the top you get a rooftop panorama across the city to the cathedral towers — Canterbury's cheapest viewpoint.
England's first Franciscan friary building, from 1267, standing on stone arches directly over the River Stour. The walled gardens are free and open daily; the chapel itself opens free Mon–Sat 14:00–16:00 between Easter and September.
Britain's first permanent farmers' market, in a Victorian railway shed beside Canterbury West station. Open Tue–Sat 08:00–19:00, Sun to 16:00. Buy Kentish apples, bread ends and cheese offcuts from the stalls rather than eating in the restaurant.
Volunteer-run vegetarian café at 17b Burgate, a minute from the cathedral gate, with mains around £7 and soup with bread nearer £5. Profits go back into a local food co-op, and tap water and refills keep the final bill low.
Street market running along St George's Street every Wednesday and Friday, roughly 09:00–17:00. Fruit and veg go by the bowl for £1–2, with cheap hot food vans, secondhand books and Kentish honey. Several stalls still prefer cash.
Wetherspoon pub at 5–9 Burgate, named after the Victorian Canterbury writer of the Ingoldsby Legends. Burgers and curries land around £7–9, pints start near £2.50 and breakfast runs until noon — the floor price for eating in the old city.
Free 11km walking and cycling route following the 1830 Canterbury–Whitstable railway, the world's first regular steam passenger service. Start at the signed entrance off Whitstable Road and climb gently into the Blean woodland.
One of the largest ancient broadleaf woodlands left in England, free to enter daily from dawn to dusk with four waymarked trails leaving the Rough Common car park. Nightingales sing through May and heath fritillary butterflies fly in late June.
Working oyster harbour on the north Kent coast, reached free on foot along the Crab & Winkle Way or by Stagecoach bus 4 or 6. The shingle beach, the harbour market sheds and the sunset across the Isle of Sheppey all cost nothing.
The campus sits on the hill north-west of the centre, and the lawn in front of Eliot College gives the classic free panorama of the cathedral rising above the rooftops. Public footpaths cross the grounds; it is a 25-minute walk up from St Dunstan's.