Beer, Running and Biscuits!

Very impressed with the Parkrun tourists at this week’s Durham Parkrun in North Carolina. We think we've done OK but Ben and his dad Michael have now done all three of the US Parkruns (Florida, Michigan and North Carolina) and they’ve also done several in South Africa as well as their home Parkrun in Kent. The other lady in the pic is Anne from Drogheda in Ireland! Vicky and I both managed to be quicker than last week despite a 280 mile car journey the day before, She was 32.42 which is her best apart from two sunny warm runs at Yarrabilba down under; I got under the 20 minute mark, (just!) with 19.56.

Quick word on American grub. We've been in North Carolina for a week or so and we kept seeing Bojangles fast food caffs among the McDonalds, Wendys and Burger Kings that sprout up at every interstate junction. (Uncle Robin recommends the more upmarket Cracker Barrel but we never found one on the same side of the highway that we were using.) On a sunny day off the beaten track  near the Carolina coast the other day we stopped and thought let's give it a go! Bojangles' main deal is biscuits an' chicken and it wasn't as bad as we thought - biscuits is American for scones and Bojangles (over 600 branches) claim that all their biscuits have been cooked less than 20 minutes ago (I suppose it depends on your definition of cooked!) Nonetheless it filled a gap and the coffee was good and the folk were friendly. The very nice young African/American lady who served us with a very Southern drawl (yaaawwwll!) told us she'd love to come to Wales someday. (I thought she'd need to get a better job than this!)

So here's the guide for the uninitiated:

Biscuits = scones

Cookies = biscuits

Shrimp = prawns

Hoagies = submarine sandwiches

Hush puppies = cornmeal balls (served with most fried meals in the south)

Grits (again!) = corn porridge

Bacon = thin strips of streaky that have been well dried out

Maple syrup goes on anything and everything especially for breakfast.

What we didn't find as it's not usually in restaurants and we had this a few years ago for a thanksgiving dinner is Terducken. This is a Turkey stuffed with a chicken and a duck - very tasty!

Long drive down to Charlotte at the weekend but the Interstate was fairly smooth going. On arrival in Charlotte, where everybody has a drawl, we found a fairly compact city with some interesting high rise buildings which were well lit up at night - I was impressed with the Bank of America building which looked a bit like a wedding cake on top. I don't think this photo does it justice but it looks as if a strong wind would bring glass shards showering down. We found the Carolina Alehouse was good enough for us after the ParkRun and Rogue Dead Guy, NoDa Woody & Wilcox IPA and a Red Oak Imperial Rye IPA did the trick. Not so long to go now til we turn up back in Wales so we're hoping that all that rain and mud that we've read about will have passed on.

Hitting the Trail again

Air's a bit thin up here!

The Appalachian Trail keeps following us. We bumped into it near the northern end of its 2200 miles in Maine, we walked a bit of it in New Hampshire, we crossed it in Vermont and came close in Pennsylvania. Here we are 5000 feet up in the Great Smoky Mountains near the bottom end (1,972 miles south of Katadhin Mountain) on the Tennessee/North Carolina border at a place called New Found Gap. Here it looks broad and easy to follow but in the more remote areas it's not difficult to go off piste! Every year a number of hardy folk set off to walk the whole trail in one go - to ordinary hikers these long distance fiends are known as 'thru-hikers' and generally take around 6 months to do it. I'm sure they'd do it quicker if they ran it!

Nearly a Bridge too Far

Well we have crossed one of the modern wonders of the world - the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel which is basically a 17 mile long bridge with a couple of one mile tunnels strategically placed so that big ships can get through into the bay. Built all of 50 years ago this makes the Severn bridge look like Lego.

Honk, honk!

What is also a wonder of the world but more of a natural one is the sight we saw today at Assateague Island, on the Atlantic coast, of thousands upon thousands of Snow Geese who are wintering here - the noise they make is astonishing and they must be the noisiest geese of the lot. Apart from their loud continual honking they also make a strange grumbling moise that sounds like heavy traffic from a way off but is actually quite close. We walked 4 miles round a huge lake that seemed chockablock with them. And then, "THEY'VE SCORED!" a sudden eruption of sound just as you'd hear from outside Old Trafford when the Reds have scored a goal, and the geese started to take off in squadrons heading off into the evening sky - beautiful skeins of stately birds drifting into the distance - (gosh I could get quite poetic about them, better move on then quick!)

Where's the Trap?

Assateague Island is also famous for its ponies. We're staying at Chincoteague (pronounced Shincoteague by the locals.)  In the summer it's full of tourists, but the only tourists in mid December are us! Chincoteague is home to the annual pony run where the wild ponies over on Assateague are herded through the channel separating Assateague from Chincoteague islands.

Close to where we are staying is the NASA complex where moon rockets are fired from. Talking to the locals it seems a subject of pride for them that something so grand happens here - but they're a bit circumspect about the rocket failure that happened a few weeks ago on October 29th. 'Oh they have now got funding for a relaunch in  few months time!' And what happened to the supplies that were destined for the Space Station with the international crew of six? 'Oh the Russians went up a few days later with some stuff.' What about the Christmas Cards?

More Lego!

Now what I hadn't realised was  this contraption has been in space for 14 years and there are 2 Americans, a German and 3 Russians up there. There've been no Brits on board but an ex-Army chappie called Tim Peake is scheduled to go in 2015 - rather him than me!

True Grit - American Breakfasts!

In 1952, the year of my birth, the Charleston Post and Courier declared that "Given enough of it, the inhabitants of planet Earth would have nothing to fight about. A man full of grits is a man of peace." Yes we're in grits country, the Southern United States where grits are provided with every meal! Breakfast this morning we were offered French toast and bacon casserole (more like bread pudding with bacon, and American bacon unfortunately is not like ours) plus grits. Breakfast in hotels, if they provide anything you're lucky, usually consists of coffee and muffins, but in B&B's you chance your luck. At the last B&B we had, on consecutive mornings, waffles and  then spinach omelette, we were also offered grits but I suggested that oats would be good - we ended up with steel cut oats which were great, but I suspected that they'd made too much as we got it the next day as well. We were not tempted to try the Shrimp and Grits Etouffe at the restaurant on our doorstep last night (the $50 a head also put us off!) So I had to try the grits this morning and am happy to report that a man full of grits is a man of peace because he can't do much else other than sit and slowly digest these grits (Vicky was not at all enthusiastic,  "they look like miniature frogspawn" she said).

Other Southern specialties include biscuit - which is really a scone. We were keen for some lunch as we sped down the interstate and might have gone for a Burger King but it was on the wrong side of the highway - on our side was a branch of Bojangles, - just like a McDonald's * with a drive-in at the back but their menu was biscuit and sausage - beats a big Mac anytime!

And aren't we the Parkrun tourists? After hitting a number of Parkruns in Australia we found one in the US. They haven't really taken off yet over here and there were only twelve of us - still that meant I got a good placing with third overall. It was a bit international as the runner in first was from Belfast, I was a Welsh third, fourth was a fellow from between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the organiser was from Beverley in Yorkshire - he had a very nice American missus though who pointed out to me a Great Blue Heron in the creek by the side of the course. It was a bit sharp at that time of the morning - well below freezing, but as you can see Vicky wasn't taking any chances with her thermal running outfit.


* Glad to see McDonald's still has an apostrophe in it!

Bizarre Brews

This has to win the prize for the most original name on a pump clip - a very tasty egg-nog stout it was too. This appeared at the Spring House Brewery in Lancaster Pennsylvania, the brew pub had a fairly limited range - 5 stouts (eggnog, peanut butter, mint, chocolate chip and coffee) and 4 IPA's (including the Astounding She Monster IPA brewed with jalapenos) and that was it - sounds gruesome but all the beer we tasted was top notch! I'm beginning to think that the further we get away from the big cities the more bizarre the USA seems to be.

Next stop was Asheville, North Carolina, a beer lover's Mecca. This is a city the size of Chester but it has nearly 20 microbreweries! We were there for 3 nights and managed to hit eight brewpubs - it seemed to us that you fall out of one to find another over the road. One of our favourites was Wicked Weed (this refers to the quote from nearly 500 years ago by Henry VIIIth who said ' Hops are a wicked and pernicious weed.') The Freak of Nature Double IPA was especially special.

Asheville is the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains, and further into the mountains is Waynesville where we stayed with our wonderful relatives Robin and Mary. Using their house as a base we were able to run and walk and explore the mountains right up to the Tennessee border. They took us on the Blue Ridge Parkway and, heading upwards we came across a herd of elk - what magnificent creatures these are! Close by was the visitor centre where Mary introduced us to the head ranger Linda, who promptly brought out a pair of antlers from her office which dwarfed her - these were from a fine elk stag that had been trimmed off the previous year

Run of the weekend was the Be Prepared Trail Race from the remote Daniel Boone Scout Camp in the Smokies. This looked like it was going to be 15K and 2600 feet of climb but in the end was more like 13K and 1800 feet (according to the guy in front of me who Garmined the route). The long uphill over the first four miles was on forest trails, but I kept it up thinking I was saving something in reserve for the final climb to the top. However it didn't quite work out like that and I found that we were directed down along more trails from an indeterminate point in the forest - hurtling along at my usual nippy pace I overtook a fair few runners who seemed to be picking their way through the tricky bits. In the end I thought I was doing well to finish in a time of 1.19.49 (1st V60 and won a woolly hat which said 'Be Prepared ' on it).

The Trots!

We weren't  quite prepared for all the buggies in Pennsylvania. We headed up to Lancaster County to stay over for a trail race and everywhere we went there were buggies going up and down the highways. We'd seen them in films, etc but when you're driving along and suddenly there they are all over the place it's quite something. There are one horse buggies, two horse buggies and buggy coaches - in the fields they're muckspreading with waggons pulled by draught (draft!) horses and so on. The reason of course is the fact that this part of the States is full of Amish (grey buggies) and Mennonites (black buggies). They don't have cars, electricity or TV's but they can use batteries so they are able to have flashing indicators so you know when they're turning right or left. It appears that their farms are the most productive per acre in the whole of the USA. There's a thing!

Don't do this in high heels!

The Amish don't use bicycles either but they do ride scooters and several times we passed grey whiskered old chaps furiously pushing themselves uphill on these special scooters - some of the Amish oldsters are apparently dabhands with skateboards as well but we didn't catch a glimpse of any of them. As we pulled into Lancaster city itself Vicky mentioned to me that alcohol is forbidden and I had a bit of a panic - however we found a couple of fine brewpubs in town so we were saved! An excellent friendly place was Lancaster and we thoroughly enjoyed the rolling hills and the fertile fields around and about - the smallish farmsteads were immaculately kept - very impressive!

Early Sunday morning (even before the Mennnites and Amish got up for church) we found our way to the start of the Dirty Bird 15K Trail Race. Nearly 400 runners gathered at the French Creek State Park and galloped through the forest trails. And dirty it was too - the trails were icy and slushy - just my kind of race and I managed to appear at the finish as first V60 in a time of 83.25 (31st overall). In compensation for my titanic efforts I came home with an enormous XXXL T shirt (in the US even the XL's are too big for me so you can imagine that it looks like a dress on me - however that was all they had left) plus they also gave me a big golden turkey trophy to try and squeeze in my suitcase.

We'll get you there!

The following day was the most fraught that we've had so far. Carefully laid plans started to unravel - we aimed back to Philadelphia to drop our hire car at the Amtrak central station in plenty of time to catch our scheduled train to Baltimore airport for our flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. Despite leaving with lots of buffer time we hit rush hour traffic in the city, missed a turning and found ourselves in a part of town that looked like the worst areas of Detroit. So we missed our prebooked train, caught the next one (paid more for the change than we had for the whole of the first tickets) and found ourselves at the airport with less than half an hour to go. I thought blow it - the man at the first class counter wasn't doing anything else so I dashed up to him and bless his cotton socks (a Maryland expression I believe) he got us through and we clambered on board. (Don't try this at home!!)

Lunch in the US

A nutty loaf please!

The US is full of Subways, McDonald's and Wendy's. But somewhat better are chains such as Panera who do wonderful bagels. And well worth looking out for are the sometimes quirky independents such as Crazy Russian Girls which we found in a small town in Vermont - and it was staffed by crazy Russian girls who did all the baking and soup making on the premises - wonderful stuff!

Yard's IPA - miles better!

We weren't quite prepared for the chilly centre of Philadelphia being almost completely shut down on Thanksgiving. However we found we had a choice of Chinatown, McDonald's or the Hard Rock Cafe. We chose the latter thinking that they might have some reasonable ale and in fact we were pleasantly surprised to find that they served Yard's IPA on tap - a hoppy, meaty, local beer which went well with the pulled pork sandwich (they seem to pull any old kind of meat over here - we had a choice of pulled pork, pulled chicken, pulled beef, pulled turkey - sounds like they're short of sharp knives to me!) Not quite sure why they have a Union Jack advertising the beer. Struck up a rather animated conversation with Juan from Puerto Rico who gave up his seat at the bar so we could eat as well as drink. Juan's young boy was in the hospital over the road (Hi Juan - Hope he's improving!)

Thought we'd got a good deal with the hotel - it's a Holiday Inn Express, very close to the city centre with free breakfast and free wifi. Perhaps I should have looked more closely at the map as we were a stone's throw away from the busy Interstate 95 which even at 4 in the morning was noisy. The very nice hotel staff have moved us though and we're now in a quieter room with a view over the river. (IT PAYS TO COMPLAIN!)




We spotted memorials to Irish and Scottish settlers this morning on the riverbank - there must be something somewhere about the Welsh settlers - a large number of Welsh Quakers arrived here in the 1680's and this is reflected in some of the place names including Bala, Cynwyd, Radnor, Berwyn and Colwyn.

Property's always been reasonable in Cynwyd!

Moonlight on Vermont

Got a bite?

Vermont is an interesting state - there are not a lot of people around (less than a third of a million - only Wyoming has fewer) but Vermont does have a few claims to fame, among them being the fact that it's the proud home of Ben and Jerry's Ice cream. now part of Unilever, Ben and Jerry's was founded by Ben and Jerry - the story goes that Ben had no sense of taste so depended on 'mouthfeel' to enjoy his food - so he experimented with ice cream that had bits and pieces in it like chunks of chocolate - the rest is history. So we had to try some and this evening we had a meal which included flatbread and lobster lagoons at Bentley's Restaurant (with Lagunitas IPA) we then called in at the store over the road from our motel for some Phish Food. Fabulous!

I'm one of those them there Cardinal Birds!

Been up some hills in Vermont (mountains over here). In Bennington I ran up Mount Anthony (2600 feet); but the snag is that these mountains are covered in trees so the views aren't brilliant. Here in Woodstock, they have Mount Peg and Mount Tom on opposite sides of the valley. This morning the temperature rose dramatically, up from minus 6 or 7 yesterday to around 15 degrees and in the mist we climbed Mount Tom, and actually found some good views at the top above the cloud - on the way down we spent ages looking for an owl that someone said they'd seen in a tree - must have missed it altogether but we did see a cardinal bird!


Nipped over the State line yesterday to Hanover, New Hampshire to win Gold and Silver at the Hanover 10K Turkey Trot. In the pleasant surroundings of Ivy League university Dartmouth College, Vicky was first in her age group and they kindly gave her a gold medal. I was cruising along towards the end and was overtaken by what I thought was some young blond tyro to find at the finish that he was 61! I think he must have had a facelift/hair transplant. Still my winning streak came to an end and I got a silver. Len Hall his name was and he told me he'd already booked his trip to Betws y Coed next September to run in the World Masters Mountain Running Championships - now how many of us have got that in our diaries already? http://www.coolrunning.com/results/14/nh/Nov23_22ndAn_set1.shtml

Finally we had a walk round to Billing's Farm which is an historic model farm estate with Jersey cattle, Southdown sheep and lots of interesting old farm buildings and equipment. We had a tour of the old farmhouse which was kept warm with plenty of fine woodburning stoves. Vicky was thrilled to be able to jump on a wagon being towed by two Belgian Draught horses (draft in Americanese). I was holding back a bit but I thought I'd better jump on as well (along for the ride so to speak!)

A Tale of Three Cities

Is it a village, is it a town is it a city?

Last week we drove straight through Manchester (pop 2,465), in the state of Maine on a detour of the Interstate – not much to see I’m afraid and we were through in 5 minutes. It's a fairly rural Manchester with a Dunkin' Donuts and a Subway – the pub Mulligan’s doubles as a funeral parlour! Earlier this week we stopped off in Manchester number 2, New Hampshire (pop 110,378) this was a more substantial place with lots of industry and traffic. We had lunch outside the courthouse and called in a huge supermarket for refreshment (rest rooms), while we were there we didn't visit the grave of Dick McDonald one of the burger brothers. Just to confuse matters we haven't been to Manchester, Connecticut, which is where the nice green sign which features above is located.

Today’s Manchester (pop 4,391) is in Vermont and beats the others hands down. The old part of Manchester looks a bit twee but it is in fact as it’s always been, with amazing marble pavements and 18^th century buildings – with the backdrop of 3800ft Equinox Mountain. Here Vicky stands in sub zero temperatures opposite the very fancy 19th century Equinox Hotel which was quite a marvel in it's day. Here's a quote from the history of the Equinox:  'The lifestyle enjoyed by guests during these years was a lavish one. During its peak, guests were treated to four meals a day – breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper – and tea and gingerbread snacks...... a scale was used to weigh guests at the end of their stay to make sure they'd put on a few pounds!'

Just to prove we’re not just here for the beer, we’ve done some cultural investigations whilst we’ve been travelling, visiting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s house in Portland, Maine and Robert Frosts’s grave in Benington, Vermont. At Benington we found an astonishing Cleopatra's needle type of monument over 300 feet high, which was built 150 years ago to commemorate the battle of Benington where, during the American Revolutionary War, a bunch of revolting locals somehow managed to defeat the British Army (what cads!)

 

And finally there goes a woodpecker outside the motel window just while I'm typing this up. There are no woodpeckers in Australia (there's your 'I never knew that' fact of the day!) but there are plenty here in the US. This one is a Downy Woodpecker - it's a bit like our Little Woodpecker in the UK but without the red hindquarters.

Cool as you Like at the Truckstop!

On a chilly Saturday morning we had a go at the Maine-ly Moose Cross Country in very pleasant parkland in Portland Maine. The poor race organiser was somewhat discomfited to find that, thanks to a big charity 5K on the same morning on the waterfront, his numbers for this year were down from well over 100 to 51. The good news was that, despite the cold and a bit of a multi terrain course, I was 9th overall in 21.07 and won a t-shirt and a pint pot, Vicky got a voucher and a t-shirt and a pint pot coming 38th in 34.06 - then again everyone who stayed for the prize giving got a prize. The term cross country seems to be applied differently here, I could have run most of it off road but most competitors ran on the tarmac paths which constituted over half of the route - I don't think anyone wore spikes!

Portland is full of excellent pubs many of which brew their own ales. We found Gritty McDuffs, one of the pioneers of US microbrewing, right opposite our hotel, we were also impressed with the Sebago and Infiniti brewpubs, both are recent newcomers to the scene - in each case great beer was accompanied by excellent grub. But the best in our opinion was the Thirsty Pig where we were served with ales and sausages (I chose the Lithuanian selection and Vicky had the Thai banger!) by a very interesting cheerful chatty lady with tattoos and ironware decorating her in interesting places. We were fortunate enough to find such Californian marvels as Lagunitas Maximus and Stone  Lukcy Btasrd (both 8% plus) together with a fine range of local Maine beers.



En route we are just beginning to find our way around the wonderful Interstate highway network. These are good roads and easy to drive on (but don't break the speed limit!) Two highlights have been as follows:

Pulling off I95 near Bangor, Maine, in need of a bite to eat, I was a bit dubious at seeing a massive fuel station surrounded by massive articulated trucks, but we were fairly desperate so thought we'd give it a go. It was a revelation - inside locals mixed with truckers mixed with tourists like us, the menu was extensive filled with American classics like 'sausage, gravy, biscuit and eggs' and 'loggerburgers'. I had a corned beef sandwich - nothing like you'd imagine - it's more like pastrami - very tasty and hit the spot. Vicky's soup was much more of a stew!

Again in need of a break before the final leg of our journey this afternoon, we called in by a crossroads in the middle of nowhere in southern New Hampshire. I thought I could do with a coffee to keep me going for the final hour or so. It went like this - first stop Jersey Mike Subs must sell tea and coffee 'Oh yes just press that button for fresh brewed tea' - out came Iced Tea, and they didn't do coffee. Back in the car over to the plaza, Shaw's supermarket was closed and desolate, Walmarts next door (the reason Shaw's was shut) was huge but had no cafe - back in the car and over to KFC, no hot drinks (?), still the waitress suggested Wendy's. Bingo - coffee for 99c - but no tea. I went for the coffee and Vicky went over the road and, for the second time this year,  entered a McDonalds. We hit McDonalds in Malta in February after the Malta Half Marathon but the only previous time I've seen her in one was in 2001 when we won some McDonald's vouchers at a race in Southport. You can imagine how difficult this must have been for her! Meanwhile back to Wendy's - this is a burger chain which operated in the UK around twenty five years ago, I seem to remember their burgers were square. In any event this very original marketing tactic can't have worked because Wendy's disappeared from the UK. But they're still here and, having asked for a hot coffee, I was in turn asked if I would like the senior's discount - on enquiring what this was I was told by a very Disney-like young lady that meant it was a free coffee! I ended up giving her a 50c tip and putting 50c in the charity box so I suppose I was down by 1c overall - but I felt much better and the coffee was good.

We're cold now - coming over Hogback mountain the car temperature gauge registered 15 degrees. Of coure this is Fahrenheit which American seem to prefer. So looking at the picture above you'll see that we were down to around minus 9 degrees centrigrade. Brrr!

Snow, Snow, Thick, Thick Snow!

  Bit disconcerting to see this from our bedroom balcony this morning as we have a bit of a drive to get down to Portland from Bar Harbor. Yesterday was lovely and sunny but there's now a snowstorm. Thankfully the snowplow's out (note US spelling!) on the hotel driveway and we can hopefully get going in a short while. The weather forecast is fairly fine tuned - according to the accuweather website we have 77 minutes of snow left before it eases off.

We'd seen plenty of snow ploughs when we finally got out on the road this morning but did a double take when we saw a school bus doubling as a snow plough. Obviously the bus drivers have to do additional training for this!

http://www.coolrunning.com/results/14/nh/Nov8_Roarin_set1.shtml tells me that I was 45th in 2.07.09 and first V60 at last weekend's Roaring Falls Trail race. This weekend we have an American style cross country in a park in Portland - I think I might have just about recovered.

Beer of the week has to be this stuff. Most of the other US microbrews are fairly hefty - 6% and above! But we found this nice brown one at several places locally - it's brewed on Mount Desert Island and is about 4.5% so much more like what we're used to. Much of Bar Harbor shuts down 'for the season' and this even applies to Atlantic Brewing's sister brewery the Bar Harbor Brewing Co. We've skipped the lobster here but will have a go when we're further down the coast.

Along the Appalachian Trail (a bit!)

Go on - all the way!

The Appalachian Trail is one of the  longest footpaths in the world. It's nearly 2,200 miles long and passes through 14 separate United States - the overall height gain is equivalent to climbing Everest 16 times. Makes the Pennine Way seem like a walk in the park! We encountered the Appalachian Trail in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and Vicky had a go (at a bit of it!)  The humorist Bill Bryson attempted to walk it and to write something funny about it; he failed to complete it (fewer than 25% so called thru-hikers are successful) but he ended up with plenty of material for a fascinating book 'A Walk through the Woods' which is currently being made into a film starring Robert Redford. Now there's a man who won't pack up working - on the plane over here I saw Redford playing the bad guy in Captain America - The Winter Soldier which was released earlier this year. The good guy was played by Chris Evans (no not that Chris Evans!!)

We're now on Mount Desert Island which is a large island (100 square miles) off the north east coast of Maine just south of Canada. Quite a holiday resort in the summer it's very quiet now which suits us. We are by the sea but there's a nice big 1500 foot hill behind us, Cadillac Mountain, which receives the first US rays of sunlight every morning. (Apologies for the photo at the summit slipping off the edge here but I didn't want to make it any smaller.)

I can see for miles and miles!