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!)