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!

Castle in the Clouds - the Sting in the Tail

A rum run this was! This picture is of the Castle in the Clouds which was the venue for the Roaring Falls trail race in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Lots of up and down including a 2.5 mile climb to the summit of Mt Roberts (2600') and a fairly interesting finish up several long flights of steps to the castle itself. Mt Roberts was named for a settler family from about 200 years ago - presumably Welsh, and the girl who gave me my race number was called Williams so I''m glad I wore my Welsh Dragon Buff!
Trail race, of course, can mean any number of things and this was a 12 mile ramble (in sub zero temperatures) along clearly defined trails which were knee deep in leaves (so that's why they call this time of year The Fall!) - lots of sprained ankles then. In addition to these easy bits, we had to follow trails(!) through the woods that were not defined at all apart from faded paintmarks or blazes on trees every so often - this is where the term 'trailblazer' comes from, they could have moved some of the boulders to one side!

That's me on the first climb - the beautiful view behind me is of Lake Winnipesaukee which I saw little of. The usual rockhoppers and mountain goats had run past me on the rugged uphill, one wiry grey haired chappie even had the gall to ask how old I was as he skipped merrily by. He told me he was 77 so I hung on grimly thinking this is another Don Williams - if he can do it at that age...well! However I got him and plenty of others on the downhill. Going well at 7 miles I found the one and only drinks station which I foolishly bypassed thinking there's not long left - I got it wrong again, this wasn't a 12K race it was a 12 mile race! Still I dug in and cursed the last couple of very rough miles, losing positions to folk I'd overtaken further back in the race - I cursed even more when I found that we had to climb up those steps to the castle. I was glad Vicky only told me about the steps a couple of hundred yards from the finish before I commenced a Tony Benton-like charge. Recuperating in the castle lodge wrapped in several layers of warm clothing I was approached by the mountain goat whom I'd bust a gut to get past to find he looked remarkably young - this unsporting rogue who went by the name of John Martin had lied - he was he same age as me! - so a victory of sorts cos I beat him. Where are the results?

V for Victory

Currently enjoying a nice light pale ale from the Victory Brewing Company who are based in Pennsylvania. Not that we're in PA - we're in NH! (More of this PA, NH stuff below.) The V in the Victory logo recalled (for me) Victory V's, those deadly brown lozenges from years ago that gave you a kick like a mule. I bought a packet a few years ago to find they were weak and insipid, maybe another example of how the mind plays tricks. But no! I discovered that the Victory V's of my youth had contained ether and chloroform, no wonder they had that dramatic effect on the tongue. These 'dangerous' ingredients have, of course, been excluded in recent years - shame!

Last night's very well educated pint was at the John Harvard brewpub in Harvard Square. An unusual light coloured Rauchbier compared very favourably with the heavier darker Rauchbiers of Franconia in Germany - in other words I liked it very much with my meatloaf! The meatier Arrow IPA at 8% was not exactly a thirstquencher but was well worth trying! Vicky enjoyed her US take on a shepherd's pie but they spell it shepard's pie which I thought a bit odd in this academically correct part of America.

And off to the White Mountains for tomorrow's run. They're called white for the same reason Snowdon's called Snowdon but there are lots of them clustered together and I'm running up one of them in the morning. This afternoon the sun wasn't shining (unlike in the photo) and as we got closer the drizzle turned to sleet turned to snow - glad I've got my bumbag to run with. We'll let you know how it goes - the ski season isn't supposed to start for another month so our lodging is fairly quiet so we should sleep well.

Regarding PA, NH, NY, etc., these are the zipcode (postcode) abbreviations indicating which state you're in. These can be quite important to take notice of especially (as in North Wales until recently) there are dry counties. Nearly half the state of Arkansas (AR or Ark) is dry and in last week's mid term US elections Arkansas counties elected to stay dry! Goodness gracious they allow the sale of guns to anybody but the idea of selling some fine ale and they're all up in arms - I think I'll stop here as I'm mixing up my metaphors.

Blog Resumed!

Good times back home with a brief pitstop on the way to the US. Started with a mad dash at the Ceiriog Canter near Llangollen, apparently I won a nice bottle of Merlot for 1st V60 (I'll know for sure if I finally claim it from you Duncan!) We then joined the Denbigh Harriers crew a week later at the British fellrunning relays at Kirby Lonsdale. I managed to wangle first leg (get it over and done with) and watched the rest of the team come in on a blustery but dryish day. We'd all had a great night out in Warton on the Saturday night, half the team had raced that afternoon at the Llandudno XC, so we have to be pleased with yet another fine performance by our small town club up against the big guns of UK fellrunning.

And that's just the price of the breakfast!

This weekend was the big family wedding in Guildford - lots of news about this on other family facebooking bits and pieces so just to say that it was a wonderful event and our Annie has never looked so happy. The day started with a slight hiccup for me as I decided to get the day going in style with the Guildford Parkrun at 9 am. I set my mobile phone alarm and got up bright and early to set off down to the park, about a mile or so from our B & B. Arrived there to find nobody around and to find I was an hour early! I hadn't reset my phone from last week!! So I was well warmed up by the time it eventually started and in the end had a really good gallop. Today involved a train up to London and readying for a business meeting on Monday. Staying at a hotel in Islington, we thought we'd get an early night by having a pint and some grub at a pub round the corner. The name sounded familiar - I suspect the value of this very pleasant freehold property is now somewhat more than £100. The beef roast and Mexican burger filled us up nicely but we also managed some excellent ale from the Liverpool Organic Brewery, Thornbridge Brewery and the Wicked Weed Brewery. The latter is based in Asheville North Carolina where we hope to be in a few weeks time! We'll keep you posted.

Thought I'd add a photo of some birdboxes we saw this morning at Duncan Terrace Gardens in Islington. We then took a stroll up to Regent's Canal which is an oasis of peace and quiet in the middle of this nosy city.