North Bennington, Southern Vermont (27 -29 Sept)

Pulp Mill Bridge built in 1820 
This is a 195 foot long two span Double barrel Burr Arch. 
It carries Pulp Mill Bridge Road over Otter Creek near Middlebury.

From Burlington we travelled down to Bennington via the Green mountain trail. This was very picturesque but had been badly affected by Hurricane Irene. Many roads had a been washed away and had only just opened again that week and then only as single track dirt roads. We were a bit disappointed that the Fall hadn’t quite reached this area yet because the weather had been too warm and wet but the countryside was beautiful all the same. 

Pulp Mill Bridge from the river

We passed through a small place called Middlebury where we encountered this two lane covered bridge. local folk law has it that the bridges were built covered so that if they came into disuse they could be used by the farmers as barns - sounds like a bit of a lame justification to me but looks good all the same. 

Middlebury Summer College

Also in Middlebury we came across this college. It consisted of about 15 buildings like this plus lecture rooms, a club, bar and refectories. the weird thing was that it was totally deserted. We met somebody walking around the grounds who said it was only used for summer literary courses because non of the buildings were insulated except the communal facilities which were also used in the ski season. It looked pristine but how the economics works is any ones guess.

Middlebury College - all a bit Stepford

The road through town was lined with houses like this - we didn't stop long just in case they invited Mary to a coffee morning!

Rochester Village Green

The next place along was a more normal looking town called Rochester in the middle of the forest with a coffee shop and deli in an antique book shop. It was great – order your coffee and just pick a first edition off the shelf – purchase optional.


















Eventually we reached North Bennington where we stayed for 3 days. It is only a small village but it had a pub, restaurant and coffee shop and famous for its covered bridges – what more do you need! 


We stayed at Eddington House, a nice little B&B right in the middle of the village run by a lovely lady called Patti. The house was old by American standards (150 years) and she lived in the attached converted barn. 


There were only three guest rooms and we had a cosy bedroom and sitting room on the first floor as well as the run of the house. The breakfasts were a highlight – one morning we had fresh baked French toast bread and butter pudding with cream and maple syrup; the next a goats cheese soufflé - bit decadent but very tasty and we didn’t need lunch.

Powers Market - 175yrs old

The coffee shop and deli had a ‘recombobulation’ station – that’s where you put your milk and sugar in. You could also get Yorkshire Tea, the only one we found in the New England area. After our M&S (gold) tea bags ran out at Bar Harbor, Mary had been on hot water until now so she filled her boots – not literally though but given the chance……(you can take the scouser out of Liverpool, etc)!

The weather was hot and humid for most of the time and we were again plagued by voracious mosquitos especially in the forests. Walking was good though and we saw a number of covered bridges on our 
ramblings. 

Old First Church from the
top of the Monument

Bennington Monument

We also visited Bennington Monument – yet another edifice to the War of Independence which is an impressive 300ft high obelisk financed (to add insult to injury) by the French! It is an impressive structure though; we got a lift to the top with views of Massachusetts, New York State, Vermont and the Green Mountains.




We visited the Old First Church in Old Bennington (as viewed from the top of the Monument). It was the first Protestant church in Vermont built in 1762 and the oldest in continuous use. The church was rebuilt in its present form in 1805. The building has interesting architecture - it was built by shipwrights and all of the columns are made from single tree trunks as a ships mast would have been made. The box pews are similar to those in St Mary's in Whitby; box pews were designed so that families could keep warm in the winter - it was common for members of the congregation to heat a rock in the fire at home and then take it with them to huddle around. Sermons tended to be short in those days!

Screened Organ Loft

Old First Church - box pews

The organ loft has much higher screening than the rest of the church. This was because before the organ was installed it was originally used to seat prisoners (mostly people who had stolen to feed their families) and black people (before emancipation) to hide them from the rest of the congregation. So things do change for the better just takes a long time! 


The church currently has an active congregation of about 30 regulars which was in line with most of the churches we visited in the area.




The village, like much of the area had a thriving artist’s community with sculptures on show all over the place. One of the ones we liked were this couple on the now defunct North Bennington railway station called ‘waiting for the train’?? 

They even have their version of the mighty Lambanana (see blog #1) but these are in the form of 100’s of moose dotted all over the place in prominent spots, sponsored by local businesses and decorated by differently by schools and other groups in town just like the lambananas.





It rained on the Wednesday so we decided to have a day out in Manchester which turned out to be an upmarket shopping strip. We didn't stay long then we went to the Norman Rockwell museum in Arlington.  He was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works had broad popular appeal in the United States, where Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades. The tour was really interesting because he used mostly people from Arlington to model for him and the guide had little stories about them all

Museums secondary business - pumpkins for the
connoisseur

Typical Rockwell Saturday
Post Cover

Some illustrations from the museum

Next stop Hartford, Connecticut.

Burlington, North Vermont

Burlington is an attractive college town on Lake Champlain overlooking New York State. We stayed a couple of miles out of town at a La Quita hotel which was very good with free public transport door to door into the city centre which ran ‘til late. The centre is a lively, bustling place with a really safe feel about it - one taxi driver said it was a bit like Boston 20 years ago which is easy to imagine.

Yet another harbour lighthouse

Trips around the lake

You'd think she owned the place!

It was bright, sunny  shorts weather but because of the wet summer there were loads of mosquito’s that took a fancy to my chrome dome so Mary had a good excuse to regularly beat me around the head – the fun we had!

Local pad - not at all ostentatious

The architecture is similar to, but on a smaller scale to that of Boston with a nice blend of old and new. Burlington was a major centre in the War of Independence so there are plenty of memorials referencing the demise of the British.  

The water front faces on to Lake Champlain the other side of which is the Adirondacks and New York State. The Lake was a major transport link in Burlington’s heyday which connected the Great Lakes with New York City and the rest of the World. Unfortunately, the advent of the railways and road transport saw the end of it as a trading centre but it still retains a busy leisure port and has commercial and cultural importance in the area.

Mary playing around with the local brass kids - hard faced as they come! 

Students had recently returned so there was a lot of activity in town especially in the Church Street (the city’s main street) which is a hub of activity full of restaurants, bars and shops.  As in all places we have visited, everybody we have met has been really helpful and friendly.

We found a great Italian restaurant down a back street called Trattoria Delia where we celebrated Mary’s birthday. The place was full and considering it was a Monday night we were lucky to get a table. Food was great – beef carpaccio followed ossu buco with a risotto – rated in the top 3 to date.

We visited St Pauls Cathedral which is a modernist concrete structure akin to Paddy’s Wigwam in Liverpool. The old cathedral was destroyed in a fire the cause of which was unknown but rumour has it that the cause was associated with some property dealing skull duggery.  The church was closed that day but the warden opened it especially for us (he was doubling up as the car park attendant and saw us wandering around) and then gave us a guided tour. The chancel wall is filled with a collage called ‘beyond the wall’ designed by Judith McManus and created by the congregation from pieces of fabric – quilt style (a Vermont tradition). The collage was inspired by the idea of what the view would be if the back wall of the chancel wasn’t there and can be likened to an impressionist view of the bank side park, Lake Chaplain and the Adirondacks at sunset.

Lake Chaplain also had great sunsets that rank up there with Seal Beach and Crosby – I’ll do a sunset quiz at the end of our tour with answers on a postcard! 

Gorham and the White Mountains

The drive from Bar Harbor to Gorham on the I2 took us about 4½ hours and passed through many old, now defunct mill towns (Bethel, Gilead and Skowhagen to name a few)  – what they do for a living now is beyond me as most businesses appear to be made up of  lawyers, banks and the obligatory architects office (Ed note – even the smallest town seems to have an architect’s office, most are one man and his dog affairs). 


There was one exception though, a town called Mexico that wasn’t even on the map. This had the biggest timber a paper mill smack bank in the middle of town which must employ people from miles around.

Me with my pumpkin head on and moose mate

It wasn't really

We didn't add to this phenomenal statistic

We stopped for lunch in Skowhegan at small café called ‘what’s for supper’ – the owner said she called it that because that’s what her kids’ were always saying to her!

Gorham is a funny little place – it is at the cross over of the I2 and 16 routes. Both of these roads are relatively quiet except for the mile long common stretch that runs through the town which was always mad busy. On either side of this stretch was every type of fast food restaurant – Dunkin Doughnuts, McDonalds, Burger King and a myriad of other fast food outlets pizza – with motels filling the gaps. The McDonalds outlet was boasting their 99^th billion sold! For all that, the place had a good feel about it in a nostalgic sort of 1950s Americana way. 

Our Motel on the strip

The centre of the town has the feel of an old Pennine mill town which has been passed by the 21^st century and reinvented itself in a kind of Hebden Bridge way.     What it did have, however, was fall colours in abundance and a backdrop of the White Mountains and, in the same way that Hebden Bridge is transformed by the rugged beauty of the Pennines, so Gorham is lifted from the gloom.

Amongst all of the fast food outlets we found a great little restaurant called Libby’s which had a pub called Saalt attached both are highly recommended. We also found a great coffee and book shop called White Mountain

We spent a day walking on one of the few rainy days on the slopes of Mount Washington. The mountains are mainly forested even at very high levels and are very rugged. As well as a lot of scrambling we also had to cross a raging torrent jumping rock to rock – all good fun!

The things Mary has been put through!

Just to prove we did some of the Appalachian

Another climb after we waded across the river

From Gorham we headed down the Kancamangus trail to Burlington. The trail cuts through the White Mountains at over 3000 feet elevation and is one of the most scenic routes in New Hampshire. We caught the Fall here at its peak and the colurs were stunning.

The highway winds and turns through the valley below the mountain ranges, making the going slow. This also makes it very popular for bikers and it seemed like every Harley Davidson club in NE America was out thrashing the road. The other major hazard is moose crossing roads and have you seen how big those bad boys are? They recommend ‘brake for moose’ on road signs dotted all along the highway but anybody in their right mind wouldn’t do anything other!

Fall in the White Mountains - 1

 

Fall in the White Mountains - 3

Fall in the White Mountains - 2

Bar Harbour life

Bass harbor ferry

The other side of the island is called the quiet side which is mainly filled with lobster fishermen and displaced artists. There are many smaller islands that are also home to many fishing families. There is a ferry that services the surrounding islands and carries kids to school on the mainland on a daily basis. It's a bit harsh in the winter especially on the islands that head straight into the Atlantic winds. 

Defunct kipper factory closed 1962

The lobster business is huge here and growing. Unlike cod and herring fishing which has long since collapsed due to overfishing, lobster fishing has become very sustainable mainly due to the way they are ‘farmed’ . Thousands of baited lobster pots saturate the sea bed around the Island and up and down the coast. Lobster live on dead fish that drop to the sea bed so the only food available to them is what is in the pot. So as they migrate on shore to off shore and back, they are nearly all caught in the pots.

Bass Harbor Lighthouse from the sea

But the fishermen are only allowed to take lobsters of a certain size so any too small or too large have to be thrown back along with all breeding females. Generally out of every 10 caught 6 are thrown back and most that end up on your plate are males. You would think that this would impact on the number of breeding males available but the 4% who make the cut and manage to grow bigger than the maximum allowed catch size end up fighting it out on the sea bed to rule the lobster harems.  The lobster industry is growing largely due to the managed feeding and the huge number of pots laid daily. The lobster men can lift 800 pots in a day in all weathers – not a job for the faint hearted. 

Bass Harbor Lighthouse

Lobster quay and typical boat

  

We went on a cruise around the islands which was brilliant and although we didn't catch any whales we saw bald eagles, cormorants, harbour and Grey seals.  


Next we go inland to Gorham and the White Mountains for more scrambling fun!

Grey seal

Cormorants

Bald Eagle looking for lunch