Christmas Day in Canterbury: Cathedral Mass and Traditional Lunch

This Christmas Day tour to Canterbury is a 9-hour-30-minute day trip from London on 25 December 2026, leaving Golden Tours Bus Stop 1, Bulleid Way, Victoria, SW1W 9SR at 8:30am and returning about 6:00pm. It includes admission to the Sung Eucharist at Canterbury Cathedral, a buffet Christmas lunch with a drink, a photo stop at the White Cliffs of Dover and a drive through Greenwich, with a professional guide. Guiding is in English only. From £199 per adult, free cancellation up to and including 18 December.

The Sung Eucharist on Christmas morning

Canterbury Cathedral was founded in 597. It has had 104 archbishops, and Thomas Becket was killed inside it in 1170. Most visitors see it as a monument, walking through with a ticket. On Christmas morning you go in for the Sung Eucharist — the building in use, full, with the choir singing, which is the state it was designed for and the one you cannot buy a ticket to see.

Entry to the service is included. A donation to the cathedral is welcomed but entirely optional.

Lunch, the coast, and the way home

Christmas lunch is served afterwards as a buffet, with a drink included — not a plated three-course meal, which is worth knowing before you picture the day. The coach then runs to the coast for a photo stop at the White Cliffs of Dover, and passes through Greenwich on the return without stopping.

Three days in Canterbury, three different visits

We run to Canterbury on all three days of Christmas, and the cathedral is not the same experience on any two of them. On 24 December the Christmas Eve tour has the city's wooden Christmas market and Leeds Castle — but the cathedral is seen from outside only. On 26 December the Boxing Day tour includes paid entry to the cathedral as a monument, and Leeds Castle with it. 25 December is the only one of the three that puts you inside for the service.