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Missing Cornwall and the coast of England, we took a short break to see the ocean and went down to Maine. We had an excellent time in beautiful weather, perhaps not walking as much as we had hoped – beaches in the area we visited were rocky and access to them tended to be reachable by car, but not so easily on foot.
| In fact, the Pemaquid-Bristol region looks a lot like Cornwall, very similar to the Fal estuary on the south coast. We even had a boat ride, to see the seals – but no ferry from St. Mawes! Lots of lobster and seafood, including fish and chips!  |  |
 You don't get many chances to photograph real coal these days!  | On our way, we stayed in the mountainous region of Jackson, New Hampshire. There is a funny little steam locomotive at the foot of Mount Washington, still puffing, complete with an engineer in a dirty face and overalls.  |
The locomotive shunts the coaches for a cog railway to the top of Mount Washington, the highest elevation in the eastern United States at 6,288 ft (1,917 m). You can actually drive up on the eastern side, which we attempted in our early days here, but our old Morris Oxford only made it halfway before it overheated.
| We spent one night in Jackson, New Hampshire, had dinner in the pub and listened to a local Irish folk band. The rest of the time was at Hawks House Inn, a comfortable, laid-back B&B near Damariscotta, Maine. The host was large, gregarious and couldn't do enough to make us feel at home, and the inn was busy each day. Breakfast was buffet style laid out on two large tables. Steve, the host, was very proud of his artisanal cereals and bread, all bought at the local farmer's market, he said, as was the selection of fruit. This was ideal for us since we could help ourselves to what we liked. Not having bacon and eggs each morning probably did our figures some good, and every little bit helps these days!  |  As you can see, the sun shone every day, which apparently is not particularly typical of the coastal region of Maine. While this is about the closest we are to the ocean, it is still almost exactly 600 kilometres away, so not an afternoon's drive. We were lucky with the weather but here at home, we REALLY need some rain. It has been a consistently hot, dry summer and the gardens have suffered, in our case due to the heat, but also because of the ravages of the plant pests which such hot weather seems to encourage. Sigh! We can't have it all... |
MAINE, USA
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