New England - Fall 2018

A trip of variety and undoubtedly spectacular scenery of all sorts, Tracey and I have reflected upon the highlights. Roughly in order of spectacularness (if such a word exists): The White Mountain Trail/Kancamagus Highway, New Hampshire Highway 100 scenic drive, Vermont Cape Cod, Massachusetts Ogunquit beach resort, Maine Boston - great city and so much more we could have done/seen/visited Mystic Seaport, Connecticut We, especially Chris, also really liked the leg room offered by Delta airline even in the "cheap seats". Oh, how we loved the soups - Boston/Massachusetts Clam Chowder, Vermont Cheddar Cheese and Beer/Ale Soup and Maine Lobster Bisque - and, of course, maple syrup with anything and everything! What's not to like? :0)

Today's activities and visits were very much time fillers prior to catching our flight home out of Boston but were, nonetheless, fascinating from a historical perspective regarding the sparks that lit the fire that led ultimately to separation from the UK and the USA declaring independence. However we started the day with a fabulous breakfast at the Splash beach side cafe overlooking the beach at Ogunquit - idyllic. We left Maine behind, passed briefly through the little slice of New Hampshire that reaches the Atlantic coastline and arrived back in Massachusetts and the outskirts of Boston. Our first stop was at Concord and the infamous North Bridge where British soldiers faced British colonists on effectively the first day of the War of Independence, April 19th 1775 (a struggle that actually dragged on for the next 14 years). As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground; but the light of it fills the horizon". The consequences of that smal...

Another crisp, bright and somewhat chilly day as we left New Hampshire for our sixth and final state, Maine. Today proved to be very much a "winding down" day with not a huge amount on the agenda. After a leisurely pootle south through the New Hampshire countryside we had a mid-morning stop at the New Hampshire town of Wolfeboro, a picturesque little resort on the side of Lake Winnipesaukee. This mug for sale in a local store perhaps summed up our "last full day of the holiday/not a lot going on" blues! We crossed the border in to Maine for an extended stop for lunch in Kennebunkport - as Hyannis is the holiday destination for the Kennedy family so is Kennebunkport for the Bush family. It is easy to see why that is so as it is a delightful coastal town with lots of quirky little properties: Tracey and I had been saving ourselves to sample lobster in Maine so we chowed down on Maine Lobster Bisque for lunch - it was lip smackingly good, definitely worth ...

Last night the temperature here dropped to nearly freezing under clear skies - that will help the foliage colour change more rapidly - and today we have a glorious crystal clear blue sky for our anti-clockwise drive around the scenic route known as the White Mountains Trail that is bordered by Highway 302 to the north and east, Interstate 93 to the west and the Kancamagus Highway to the south. It is no exaggeration to say that around every curve and along every straight the views are simply spectacular and we are so lucky to have a perfect day in which to enjoy them. Our first stopping point was at the Mount Washington Cog Railway  base station. As was the case yesterday, the top of Mount Washington is completely clear and visible and a ride up to the top would have been most worthwhile, if rather wallet sapping ($72 each for a return ticket!). Regrettably, time pressures did not allow so we had to make do with watching the little trains wheeze up the lower slopes towards the sum...

As forecast, today is, once again, dry and sunny if slightly on the chilly side (this is how things should stay, all being well, for the remainder of our trip) as we left Vermont behind and headed in to the fifth and penultimate state of this trip, New Hampshire. However, before we left Vermont we had a couple of stops. As we travelled slightly south and east we dropped in to Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks, an 8th generation farm that has over 5000 maples tapped. One of the family, Burr, gave us an illustrated talk on how they do what they do and dished up some amazing facts including that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup. A tasting session followed and a lesson in how to make Maple Snow (maple syrup drizzled on crushed ice). Inevitably the farm store and gift shop awaited to round off the visit. Another vehicle that looked like a refugee from the Cars movie sat outside (a Nuffield tractor, made by Morris, as was, in the UK): Our final stop in Vermont was ...

Unfortunately, today was something of a washout as we woke to pounding rain - not great as in the morning we were scheduled to have a walking tour of the city of Burlington, that sits on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, the largest lake in the USA outside of the five Great Lakes. Thankfully, given the conditions, the walking tour was transformed in to a coach tour which was interesting enough but Burlington, like most places, was not at its best viewed under cover of glowering grey skies and pouring rain! On a sunny and warm day the compact city centre and the waterfront area in particular would have been most enjoyable ....... we could only imagine. Back on scenic - though rather less so today - Highway 100 we headed towards Stowe, Vermont, passing as we did so the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory ( definitely a tour stop that we would have made had we been travelling independently). As it was we stopped off for a pre-booked visit to the Cold Hollow Cider Mill  and enjoyed...

So, today we headed north out of Massachusetts and in to the "Green Mountain State", Vermont. There was a lot of driving as we powered up to Burlington, that is only about 40 miles from the Canadian border, for a two night stay at (another) Hampton Inn We largely followed the scenic drive route Highway 100 (and very scenic it is, too) and we made three stops. First stop was Bennington, where we visited an ancient wooden church, "one of the most beautiful examples of early colonial architecture" and notable for containing the final resting place of the American poet Robert Frost of The Road Not Taken fame: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Bennington is also the site of a famous British defeat in the Revolution that is commemorated by the tallest monument in New England, the Bennington Battle Monument  It wo...

The new day dawned dull but dry and improved steadily throughout to end with blue skies and sunshine ( much better than yesterday). Our first stop was to the Mystic Seaport Museum  (where we got rained off Tuesday afternoon) that is a working shipyard, specialising in the restoration and renovation of wooden hulled ships, and also a museum of the same sort as, say, Beamish in the UK with a village made up of reconstructed old homes and business premises. Sadly our schedule only allowed an hour and a half for what might easily have kept us busy for an entire day. However, we did see the on-going restoration work being carried out on the Mayflower 2 , a replica of the original donated to the USA by the UK in the late 1950s and which is due to be returned to its usual mooring off Plymouth, Massachusetts, in time for the 400th anniversary of the pilgrims' arrival in 2020: We also went on board the last remaining whaling ship of its type the Charles W Morgan  Like the Mayflo...

Today was a three state day as we left Massachusetts behind (for now) and headed east through Rhode Island (fake news alert! It is not an island but it is the USA's smallest state by quite some margin measuring only a little over 1000 square miles, roughly 1.5 times the size of East Sussex) and on in to Connecticut through torrential, post-Florence, downpours. Interestingly, Rhode Island came in to being as a result of the early pilgrims, who had left the UK to escape religious persecution and intolerance, having a falling out over, you guessed it, religion. They banished from Massachusetts one of their number, Roger Williams, who was expelled for spreading new and dangerous ideas largely around the separation of church and state. So much for tolerance. Following the historical theme, albeit rather more recent history, we stopped off for a visit to one of the Vanderbilt family's "cottages" (actually a mansion), The Breakers , in Newport, Rhode Island. It is a 70...

Today we headed east and north to the very tip of the Cape Cod peninsula via a scenic drive that included a stop at the town of Chatham that, like Plymouth yesterday, really is quite charming and quaint (and, to be fair, not at all like its namesake in the UK but in a good way). After an obligatory view of the Chatham Lighthouse we strolled up and down Main Street full of twee independent stores selling all sorts of "stuff" of dubious value to passing mugs. Talking of which, Miss Tracey resisted buying the one pictured here bottom left (not sure how the yellow one sneaked in.......): We then drove to the far northern tip of Cape Cod to Provincetown which is where the founding fathers, or pilgrims, aboard the Mayflower actually first landed in the new world. Provincetown is best described as the love child of Brighton and Camber - it is a gay mecca (a hangover, apparently, from the 60s and 70s when it was very much a liberal hippy magnet) and there is lots of sand (which...

So, with a somewhat heavy heart we left Boston - as when we first visited Chicago, we felt that the city has so much for visitors to do and see that a day and half really only enabled us to scratch the surface of what the city (small by US standards with a population of approximately 600,000) has to offer. We have been blessed (so far) with glorious weather - although that may change mid-week as the remnants of Florence head north up the east coast - and again today it is dry, sunny and warm (mid 20s). Our first stop is at Plymouth, Massachusetts, a coastal town south of Boston facing east out in to Cape Cod Bay and famous as being the place where the founding fathers, or pilgrims, first stepped in to the New World. Well, not quite as they had made land a month earlier on the tip of the Cape Cod peninsula, at what is now Provincetown (that we visit tomorrow), although the Plymouth Rock is touted as where the first tentative steps were made. Unlikely, or so it seems, but why let the t...

After an early breakfast at Au Bon Pain we reconvened at our coach for a 3 hour sight-seeing tour of Boston with Jim our local guide, a venerable old Bostonian. He started by pointing out what we had already noticed, Bostonians have a very distinct accent i.e. they pronounce Boston as Bawston and they readily drop the letter "r" i.e. Harvard, the local university, is Havad and pilgrim is pilgim etc. Jim took us largely along the Freedom Trail  that wends its way past 16 historical sites including; The Beaver , a replica of one of the Boston Tea Party ships: The USS Constitution , otherwise known as "old ironsides": Continuing yesterday's TV related theme, we dropped by at the Cheers bar: We concluded the tour in the historic Quincy Market  where we lunched on a bowl of the local delicacy, Boston Clam Chowder at Ned Devine's In the afternoon we walked back to our hotel through the oldest park in the USA,  Boston Common  and the adjacent Pu...