Aurora Borealis Sighting

The news been saying that this is a prime opportunity for aurora borealis viewing, but we'd heard that before and had never seen it.  We went out around 10PM on 10/10 and there definitely was some red-pink glowing in the sky, but nothing spectacular.  Sarah took some pictures though and it's amazing how much more sensitive to the aurora phenomenon the camera is than the human eye.

Se we went back inside and I got ready for bed.  Then my sister texted and said we had to go back outside, it was amazing!  So we did (me in pajamas and slippers) and it sure was amazing.  We stayed out for about half an hour at the fork of our driveways and should have stayed out longer.  I later went up on our third-floor deck and it was perhaps more amazing from up there.

What we saw was a pastel red-pink, almost fuchsia at times large streak of color coming from the Northeast.  There was another long streak of lime green to the Southeast of that and basically parallel, but the green sometimes formed into a column and sometimes shimmered like a curtain.  It was amazing how quickly the colors and shapes changed, from pastel pink to brick red in the one streak and from almost a soft yellow to Kelly green in the other.  But it wasn't just two streaks, they were swirling to some degree and there were flashes of white, yellow, and blue kind of radiating from the Northeast but filling the whole sky in an instant.  The white was so bright at times you would have thought it was a huge spotlight someone was shining on the scene from the Southwest.  The three-dimensionality of it all was astounding too, with the red-pink glow making a background and the more brilliant streaks and flashes dashing in front of it.  And in the background was a white shape that sometimes faded and sometimes came forward, like a low sine wave pattern along the Northern horizon.

Remember that this was what the camera saw, not what our eyes saw:

We wanted to stay but were getting too  cold and so went in.  As I say, I later went upstairs and watched some more.  It was truly spectacular and now we can say we've seen the aurora borealis and also a full solar eclipse in the same year.  It made me marvel at the wind from our small yellow dwarf star, at the geomagnetic dome protecting our even smaller planet, and at the fact that we measly humans live there and can look up and see evidence of the frightening but beautiful forces shaping our universe.  

Quick Nova Scotia Trip, Sunday

We got up as soon as it was light on Sunday the 29th, we had a long drive in front of us.  It showed signs of becoming another absolutely gorgeous day, but was pretty foggy early there on the seaside.  We had some granola bars and room-made coffee, so after we dropped off the keys at around 7:50 we were bound to get as far Southwest as we could before stopping.  We had filled up the tank the night before … we got 6.3 on the trip to Cape Breton!  What this means is that when we switched the car to metric, it reported gas efficiency in liters per 100km rather than in miles per gallon.  So a lower number was better rather than a higher number … I kind of liked this.

Barely anyone on the pink highway early on Sunday, and we set the cruise control and just watched the trees roll by, down 104 towards Truro.  Kind of strange to go West to Maine!  We finally did stop at a Tim Horton’s (we had to go to one, it was as imperative as going to a Cracker Barrel in South Carolina) to get more coffee and a breakfast sandwich.  A bit West of Truro we detoured onto route 4 to avoid the only (sic) toll in Nova Scotia, but then re-joined 104 and soon crossed into New Brunswick, where the road became route 2.

I’m sure parts of New Brunswick are as beautiful as Nova Scotia, but all our time there except for our lunch break was spent on the superhighway … route 2 to West of Moncton and then route 1 down through St. John … and it was kilometers and kilometers of lovely trees, but not much in terms of rolling hills or vistas of the sea.  And all road signs there are bilingual, with the non-English language being French this time, as opposed to Gaelic or Mi’kmaq.

Finally got South of St. John and were desperate to find a nice little park or something, stretch our legs and take a lunch break.  We still had half our bologna sandwiches left!  Signs kept tempting us to detour down to the Acadian Coastal Drive along the South-facing New Brunswick coast rather than continuing on the highway.  We resisted because we wanted a “stop” rather than a “drive,” but took one of them eventually and down route 790 we found the lovely little town of Chance Harbour.  We continued along the loop and lucked into a small turnoff where we could park, walk around, and gaze out over a marsh to the ocean through the hazy afternoon light.

790 looped back up to route 1, and it was just another hour to St. Stephen and the border crossing back into the USA.  We crossed the St. Croix River, gained an hour, and had just a short wait to get through immigration.  They barely questioned us, just glanced at our passports and waved us through.  Filled up on gas again at the intersection of routes 1 and 9, and hit the road into Maine.  As much as we’d liked our trip, it was kind of nice to be back in the States … Canada never seemed abnormal to us, but this was definitely much more normal, or at least familiar.  And the Harris signs outnumbered the Trump signs all along route 9.

One last stop.  We love the Airport Brewing Company pub in Ellsworth but had never been to their taproom in Amherst ME.  So we detoured a bit and got a quick pint there, which was another great stop after having been on the road for almost eight hours.  Then one last hour through Ellsworth and back home to Sedgwick, where the cats were very happy to have us back.

How to sum up?  We had a great time, and it was an entirely successful, quick foray outside of our comfort zone of Northern New England.  We don’t know when or if we’ll ever be back in Nova Scotia, but we definitely concluded that it’s somewhere we’d love to go back to and spend some more time exploring.  Who knows?

Quick Nova Scotia Trip, Saturday

The rain petered out finally, in the middle of the night, and we woke to a crystal-clear, beautiful morning on Saturday the 28th.  Went back to the restaurant for another fine breakfast, with staggering views to the Northwest up the Canso Strait, which separate Cape Breton Island from the rest of Nova Scotia.  Packed up and hit the road North around 9:00 (after filling up on gas), crossing the Canso Causeway and turning up 105 in Port Hastings.  The highway was almost empty, and after an hour or so we were back driving along the coast, diagonally up the Northeast side of the island.

First Nations place names suddenly appeared, and many road signs were in both English and Mi’kmaq.  The culture was centered around the town of Whycocomagh and Whycocomagh Reserve.  We saw some gaming locales, and suddenly every other storefront had big signs saying, “We sell cannabis!”  Though it’s legal in Canada, these were the only dispensaries we saw, perhaps there’s a loophole in regulations for natives.

This was a beautiful drive on a beautiful day, up the interior coast past Nyanza and Baddeck toward St. Ann’s.  Here you’re supposed to turn West onto the beginning of the Cabot Trail around the Northern part of the island, but we realized that if we kept on up toward Englishtown, we could take a free ferry across St. Ann’s Bay instead.  This also took us past the Giant MacAskill Museum, which is a sister museum to the one we had seen in Dunvegan Scotland!  But it looked even dodgier than the one in Scotland had … the only sign for it was a small one at the end of a muddy, uphill driveway and we didn’t stop.

Our timing was perfect and we had to wait only a minute before they waved us and seven other cars onto the small Englishtown Ferry.  It was a very short, tumultuous ride over the narrow channel to the spit on the other side, and we’d probably saved significant time over taking the land route.  We joined the Cabot Trail, route 30, and did I say it was beautiful before?  This was just incredible as the Bay opened up into the North Atlantic, the wind and the waves kept coming from the Northeast, and we wound along the lovely coast up to Ingonish.

Liquor and beer stores in Nova Scotia are all branded as NSLC outlets … alcohol is well regulated in Canada … and we stopped in one in Ingonish, where we picked up a great assortment of beers and ciders and had a nice talk about the upcoming National Day for Truth and Reconciliation with the orange-shirted clerk.  My favorites of the Nova Scotia beers I sampled were Black Angus and Crazy Angus from the Cape Breton Brewing Company of Sydney, and DIPA from the Propeller Brewing Company and “The IPA” from Nine Locks Brewing, both of Dartmouth.

We also stopped at the Ingonish Visitor Center for the Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Ingonish, paid our entrance fee and picked up a map.  The National Park is one of the most spectacular, scenic, breathtaking, wild, places I’ve ever seen and I’m so glad we went there.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to hike any of their many trails and then get back to Auld’s Cove and Maine on schedule.  We’ll need to go back there someday to do it justice.

But we did stop at many overviews, we just couldn’t pass them up.  Some are down at sea level, where the massive swells from the ocean break on the cliffs, some are up high on top of the cliffs themselves, from which you can see for many kilometers up and down the coast and out to sea, some are at the bottom of lovely, peaceful valleys between steep hills, and some are at the heads of those valleys, from which you can see huge distances of Fall-colored forest.

We saw a little pink granite in the seacliffs and exposed hills, but it was mostly sedimentary rock: red, white, and gray, sometimes all in one rockface.  Some of the jagged rocks were so shiny gray they looked like aluminum or stainless steel.  The mix of trees was a lot like Maine, mostly spruce and pine, but with more deciduous trees, mostly oaks and poplars but also many maples and beeches.

The Cabot Trail leaves the Park in places, and it’s funny how the road surface instantly turns into a mangled mess of potholes and creases … it’s well maintained in the Park.  And the signs for every kind of tourist trap you can imagine pop up like campaign signs.  We stopped at one artisanal sandwich and pizza place and got some nice home-made lemonade and a couple of sandwiches, which turned out to be mostly bologna.  Then back into the amazing Park and we had a great mellow lunch stop at a picnic table in one of the hidden valleys.

Continued on and then down the Northwest coast, to Chéticamp, where the Park ended and the cheap hotels dominated.  We had a long way to go down the coast to Margaree Forks, where we kept right on 19, down through Inverness and Mabou to Port Hood.  I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t have as many glimpses of the sea as we had had on the other coast, but there were plenty of trees, run-down houses and neatly kept houses, farms, lakes, marshes, and sudden tidal gashes in the land.  At one point, Google told us we were about to go through Dunvegan, and we were psyched (we’d been in the Dunvegan in Scotland), but it was only a deserted intersection.

In Port Hood the road ran alongside the ocean for a while, and we realized we’d gotten farther along than we thought we would by that time of afternoon.  It was less than an hour back to Auld’s Cove all of a sudden.  So we put the brakes on and started looking for a nice turnoff, maybe a nice trail, and there weren’t any!  Oh well.  We poked around some and in Craigmore we found a road down to a beach and a muddy parking lot at the end of it (with a friendly dog), where there were some people in a camper van camping rough (we’d seen a few doing this all over the island, nowhere near as many as in Scotland).  We took a walk on the beach and then were going to press on but thought, wait a minute … we have a great view of the sparkling ocean out to Cape George Point to the right and the entrance to the Canso Strait to our left.  Let’s sit right here, have a beer/cider, and enjoy the end of the afternoon.  It was a great cocktail hour!

We were tempted to go straight back to our nice cabin from there, but wanted a little variety for dinner and, after going through Port Hastings and back over the causeway, stopped at 3 Square in Auld’s Cove for dinner.  They’ve just opened and have more plans for a nice restaurant than they have a nice restaurant at this point, but we didn’t care and the food they had was excellent.  Sarah had mussels in a curry sauce, and I had a pork belly bowl.  Back to the cabin for a beer/cider on the small porch and then a game of Azul when it started to get chilly.  It was Saturday night and most of the other cabins were now occupied.  There was a little late-night revelry, but it remained a peaceful spot.

Quick Nova Scotia Trip, Friday

Of course, the first night in a hotel, nice as the room was, neither of us slept well even though we were wiped out from the trip.  But we got up eventually and had fine coffee and a couple of nice omelets in their restaurant, and then got on the road a bit before 10:00 (9:00 by our clocks) on Friday the 27th.  It was a stormy, foggy morning and though we were just a block or two uphill from the harbor we could only see a few huge fishing boats right at the dock.

We found 103 West, which took us around the Southeast part of Nova Scotia, up toward Halifax.  There were very few other cars on the road, as was the story throughout most of the trip, and though it was raining … sometimes pretty hard … the scenery was stunning.  The sun tried to break out a few times but then the rain would come back hard.  It was savage, seaside weather, which we loved, and we caught glimpses of small fishing villages and vistas out to islands and the North Atlantic for the few hours up to the capital.

The traffic and the rain got intense and 103 ended and dumped us on local roads when we entered Halifax.  We followed 111 through town and over the MacKay Bridge, which suddenly required a $1.25 toll!?!  We’d been told that the only toll on Nova Scotia roads was in one stretch of route 104 and so hadn’t gotten any Canadian cash, let alone coins for the toll hopper.  Luckily there was an attendant out in the pouring rain, and she accepted five US quarters and raised the gate for us.

It was time for lunch, but we wanted to get out of the big city and finally did, continuing Northeast onto route 7 and eventually highway 107.  We had our eyes on the Rose and Rooster in Grand Desert on the Chezzetcook Peninsula, and this was a very mellow lunch stop in an artisan bakery/sandwich shop.  Sarah had excellent crab cakes and I had a very nice Cobb salad.

Just as it had always been low tide when we were in Scotland, it’s always high tide in Nova Scotia, by my scientific observation.  We crossed over and drove along several beautiful inlets of the sea, and briefly considered changing plans and exploring the peninsula more.  But we had objectives and didn’t linger, getting back onto route 7 and touring farther and farther up the coast, past quaintly named peninsulas and towns (Musquodoboit, Jeddore, Popes Harbour, Mushaboom, Watt Section, Dufferin, Necum Teuch, Ecum Secum, etc.) and more and more sudden views of the stormy sea.

We finally made it to Marie Joseph and the eponymous, deserted Provincial Park there, where we took a short break to stretch our legs and feel the stiff onshore wind coming off the Atlantic and through the offshore islands.  It was getting late by then, but we were still barely on schedule to make our reservations in Auld’s Cove that evening.  Route 7 turned North soon after that in Spanish Ship Bay, and it was a few more hours across the interior of Nova Scotia, past several long lakes, up towards Antigonish.

Place names familiar from our Scotland trip had started, and signs were now bilingual in English and Gaelic.  One of the lakes was Lochaber, and several towns in the North of the island had the ubiquitous “-ish” suffix.  We turned East on 104, a two-lane superhighway after kilometers and kilometers of pot-holed, severely twisting coastal and mountain roads.  Highways and gas stations are all metric in Cananda.  I can multiply by 0.64 pretty well, but after a while this got to be a pain and we changed our brains and the car’s dashboard display to kilometers.  Another unusual note was that much clay and rock in Canada is red, and so we were traveling on pink macadam.

In Havre Boucher the traffic came to a dead stop, there may have been some kind of accident, as no cars were coming the other way.  We took a quick (illegal) u-turn and got off onto route 4, which parallels the superhighway.  Another few miles on the Sunrise Trail up to Auld’s Cove, where we turned onto the D 31 Road out onto a peninsula, ending at the Cove Motel and Restaurant, where we were going to stay for two nights.

We loved this place!  We were in a touristy area, at the gateway to Cape Breton, and though this was one of the less expensive places it was still a pretty high price, but well worth it.  We got a secluded cabin off in a corner of the peninsula with a king-size bed, a table big enough to play games on, a nice bathroom, windows that opened, and wonderful views.  The rain and wind were peaking again, and after dumping our stuff we made our way back to the restaurant, where we had a fine seafood dinner and couple of beers.

Ty Wallace entertained the guests with his well-produced, solo country act.  He basically played karaoke tracks, accompanied them with his big six-string, and filled in with a very nice baritone.  He did all the usual suspects, Yoakam, Haggard, Travis, Jennings, Buffett, Denver, etc. but sadly didn’t cover any Canadians!  Oh well.

Quick Nova Scotia Trip, Thursday

For years I’d been staring at the map of the Atlantic Provinces and figuring we should take a trip there someday, but it had always been put off.  To get there you pretty much need to go through Maine, and when we’re up in Maine we want to stay put.  But this year the timing turned out perfectly, and we planned a quick trip up to Northern Nova Scotia and back through New Brunswick.  We knew it would be a lot of driving, but we really wanted to get up to Cape Breton and really didn’t want to leave the kitties for longer than three nights.

We packed for a few days of variable weather and took off for Bar Harbor on September 26th, where we caught the 3PM departure of The Cat car ferry.  Of course, after weeks of perfect late Summer/early Fall weather it was a dark, rainy day, but that was no problem.  The boat actually left around 2:45 and only held about a third as many passengers as it could have, though the car decks seemed pretty packed.  There were many cars from away, most from South of New England: Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, etc.  I watched from out on the side and rear decks with a few other hardy souls as we left Bar Harbor, cruised fast through the Porcupines, dropped the pilot South of Ironbound, and then gunned it out to sea at 40 knots.

I rejoined Sarah in comfortable bus-style seats in the forward-facing lounge.  It didn’t take long before the motion of the boat made us both feel a bit seasick.  I tried reading at first and then just closed my eyes, which calmed the nausea pretty much, and dozed for most of the 3½ hour trip.  We finally spotted land, and then the Cape Forchu Lighthouse.  We were still really moving fast and didn’t slow down until we’d turned up into Yarmouth harbor and past Bunker Island into the inner harbor.

There was quite a wait to get off the boat, and then again at Immigration/Customs.  Could be that their systems were down in Immigration, because they were moving very slowly.  By the time we got out it was already about 8:00 (we were now on Atlantic Daylight Time) and so we stopped immediately at Rudder’s Seafood Restaurant and Brewery, where we had some armor-plated haddock, fries, and a passable red ale.  Then just a few bocks up to the Rodd Grand Hotel, where we got a small but clean and totally acceptable sixth-floor room from the young, nose-ringed woman at the desk whose boyfriend was lurking in the shadows.  The bar was still rocking, though the streets of Yarmouth were empty at 9PM.

More Summer JRAD

JRAD is touring again this Summer and we had multiple choices to see them, but opted to go to the Boston Seafront Pavilion (currently called Leader Bank Pavilion) to see them on Saturday, August 3rd.

It was a beautiful, windy day on the waterfront.  We ate outside at the Lord Hobo Seaport and then cruised on over there, settling into practically the same seats we've had the last few times there.  JRAD had no opener and came out right on time.  Lots of empty seats then and it filled in quickly, but never got really packed.  Jon Shaw was sitting in for Dave Dreiwitz.  Here's the setlist:

Set 1: Tangled Up in Blue, New Minglewood Blues, Bertha, Saint of Circumstance, The Other One, Jack Straw

Set 2: Greatest Story Ever Told, Help On the Way, Slipknot!, Shakedown Street, Truckin', The Eleven, I Know You Rider

Encore: The Weight

Molly At the Opera House

Molly Tuttle and her great band are on tour again this Summer, and announced a date at the Waterville Opera House on July 25.  They also announced gigs in Boston and at the Ossipee Valley Festival in Southern Maine, but we settled for just the one.

Sarah and I drove out to Waterville on an afternoon which was threatening rain but then clearing up as we approached town, maybe.  We had looked at several places for dinner and settled on the Lion's Den Tavern, which had cold beer and very nice food.  It was pretty empty when we arrived but the crowd was right behind us.  The place was soon packed and while we ate a thunderstorm struck hard and  heavy rain soaked the downtown.

By the time we left, the sun was back out though, and after wandering over to check out the river we got our Will Call tickets and joined the line already waiting to get in about 15 minutes before doors.  Most concerts in the Waterville Opera House are reserved seats, but for this they did General Admission for the orchestra (reserved upstairs), and a woman announced that the GA policy meant, "You're free to sit anywhere you like.  So that means that if someone is standing up and dancing in front of you, you're free to move to another seat."  I wish they'd say stuff like that more often!  We opted for seats in the fourth row, on the center aisle, knowing that the front of the theater would jam up with people standing, and strategically insuring fine site lines and fine sound.  We were right, especially when, as they do in the WOH, they let people rush up into the orchestra pit.

The Chatham Rabbits opened and they're a fine, mellow, husband and wife, folk-country duet from North Carolina with a bunch of very good originals.  Sarah has a pleasing, untutored voice and picked workmanlike leads on her large banjo while Austin backed her up on guitar.  But after a long break the real deal came on, and the crowd erupted.

Molly Tuttle and her Golden Highway band, with Bronwyn, Kyle, Shelby, and Dominick, has been touring heavily for a few years, riding the crest of the wave of bluegrass stardom, and the people of Maine were Dooley (no pun intended) thankful that they'd paid us a visit.  They've become such a mature band, playing together flawlessly and upping the difficulty level with each show.  In one jam they rotated between each player soloing with four bars, then two bars on the next round, then one bar, then actually trading notes before Molly's guitar took dominance.  They can play downhome bluegrass and instantly switch to a baroque arrangement, and then finish the song like a rock and roll band.  Molly is of course one of the best bluegrass guitar players and female singers ever, and the rest of the band is of exceptional quality, particularly Bronwyn and Dominick.

They opened with the hard bluegrass of Over the Line and followed that with their excellent cover of the Stones'  She's a Rainbow and then just went on and on with their top notch songs.  It didn't take long for them to get to the spacey/spooky stuff, which on this occasion included Where Did All the Wild Things Go?, Stranger Things, and Alice In the Bluegrass.

She did so many of her other great songs too, including Downhome Dispensary, Crooked Tree, and El Dorado.  A high point for me was their unexpected cover of Queen Of Hearts, written by Hank De Vito (I'd thought Guy Clark wrote it) and covered by Rodney Crowell.  But the real highlight was when the band left the stage and Molly moved up front with her guitar and asked for requests.  Several were shouted out (I wanted Cold Rain and Snow), but she knew what she wanted to play, and gave us a priceless cover of Standing On the Moon, playing it like a folk song sung around a prairie camp fire.

She asked the Rabbits back out for the last song, and they traded verses on Big Backyard, which of course includes the line about the rocky coast of New England.  Molly said she and Shelby had taken a ferry out to Vinalhaven while they were up in the mid-coast, too bad the weather was not the best for them.

Great show, and then a long drive home through deserted country roads.

GRF 2024, an Overcast Sunday

There were some glimpses of the sun over the weekend, and at times on the last day it seemed it might clear up.  But though we got no rain and thunderstorms on Sunday, it never really got sunny.  And that's fine, we've spent enough time at the GRF in the heat.

Left the crowd at the hotel at about the same time and again there was no line when we got to the Fairgrounds at about 11:15 and snagged a great place by the soundboard at the Main Stage.  I'm not sure if they sold out or not.  The Fairgrounds can definitely hold a lot of people and they'd left a huge area for standing room in front of the Main Stage, which I never saw entirely full.  I never felt hemmed in by people, as I had the last few years at the GCC, and that's a good thing.

As mentioned, the 2024 Festival lineup was not that compelling, and Sunday may have been the worst.  Up first was another bad choice, and I started with Mon Rovîa at the Back Porch.  He played some quiet original songs and accompanied himself on a beautiful tenor guitar, which was almost as small as a ukelele.  His name is a tribute to the biggest city in his native country, Liberia, and he interspersed songs with harrowing tales of civil war in Liberia.

I wandered over to the Deans Beans stage where Katy Kirby was leading her band through some of her surprisingly good original songs.  One line of hers I loved was, "If the bears set a table for me, one of these days I'll have to sit down to eat."  Her bass player had a very pretty-sounding violin bass.

Time for Margo Cilker, a young country musician I was really looking forward to hearing, and she was on the Main Stage.  I went right up front and, though it never got that crowded up there for an early Sunday set, there were several very dedicated fans, as well as the Taylors.  And I really enjoyed her set!  Margo did not have a crackerjack band, she and they were all very mellow and I was reminded of seeing Zoe Muth, another laid-back Westerner, at the GRF several years ago.  Margo writes some great songs and has a killer presentation.

Her songs really sneak up on you, and the words pile up and pile up until she's almost rapping, though still with a Western accent.  At one time in her song about Tehachapi she was singing about traveling in the Southwest and she suddenly threw in a line from Lowell George's Willin' and her band played a bar of the chorus.  In another song she was singing the rote country line about, "If I was a preacher," and she suddenly sang, "I'd tell you how to vote, who to believe, and who to fuck."  On of her traveling songs has a shout-out to Singing Beach in Manchester-By-the-Sea MA.  Later in her set she switched from electric guitar to a classic, deep, Western acoustic that was as big as a bathtub and had a huge pickguard.  Again, I loved this set.

Wow, the GRF was almost over, but still a few things to see.  Sarah and I wandered down to the Deans Beans Stage for Dobet Gnahoré, who is an energetic traditional African singer.  She had a great electric guitarist, also a bass and drums, and she sang and played congas.  The most amazing thing about her set was the number of beads (bones? teeth?) she was wearing.  She had them strung in her hair, huge earrings, a choker and two other necklaces, armbands, bracelets, rings, fingernails, and two belts!

Almost time to leave, but got one last plate of beans, rice, and guacamole from La Veracruzana, and listened to a few tunes from Josiah and the Bonnevilles, who is a solo artist with a very strong right hand, an infectious harmonica, and some driving songs.

OK, that's it.  We considered seeing another set from Margo Cilker, who was just starting up over at the Back Porch or staying for the traditional Ukrainian folk of DakhaBrakha, but we were ready to head on back.  It had been another surprisingly fun time at GRF, even with the weather, and we'd seen and heard some stuff we loved.  Time to save our energy for next year!

GRF 2024, a Rainy Saturday

Our room at the Rose had two queen beds and was more comfortable than it might have been, but my bed kind of listed so much I had to lie diagonally, and the air conditioner just had two settings, on and off.  So it wasn't the best night's sleep, but who cares, we were soon up and hanging out with our friends on the veranda, eating weird stuff and drinking tea, coffee, and fruit juice.  As I say, my spreadsheet was praised and we planned for another busy day at the Festival.  Highly anticipated were the Wonder Women of Country and Mdou Moctar, and kind of dreaded were Fleet Foxes ... that was about right as it turned out.

Sarah and I took off before anyone else at about 10:45, there was no line when we got up to the Fairgrounds, and we got a spot on the Main Stage not quite as good as Friday's but still excellent.  More touring of the vendors, and then it was kind of a toss-up whether to start on the Deans Beans Stage or the Back Porch, since I'd rated both acts as "maybe."

Off to the Back Porch first for Love Crumbs, and I really liked them for a few songs.  They have two women singers up front and they sang well together, the hippie on bass took a lead, the nerd on piano had another good lead, and then the biker on lead guitar ripped off another one.  But by the time they started a fourth song I got bored and left.  All their songs were about bad sex and/or bad lovers.

Hurried over to the Deans Beans Stage for Prewn, whom I'd classed as "moody, reverb-y folk rock" in my spreadsheet.  And I loved them!  This is a small band fronted by Izzy Hagerup with a guitar, bass, and drums, and not too many people were there.  They were doing an innovative, goth song about ticks as I walked up, how they dig into your flesh without you knowing and poison your blood.  What's not to like?  Their guitarist sometimes made a spooky drone sound on his electric with a bow, and all of their songs degenerated into feedback jams.  I love this stuff!

It was starting to rain lightly and Izzy said, "Oh no, here it comes again!"  The humidity, the wind, and the approaching electricity made her long and unkempt hair frizz up, and the lights lit this like a purple halo.  That was a great visual, or maybe that was the gummy kicking in.  But suddenly the heavens really opened and I realized I'd better make a dash for the raincoat I'd left over at the Main Stage.  By the time I got there I was absolutely soaked from head to foot, and they were calling again for everyone to shelter from the lightning.

So, back in the car again with the cooler of beer.  Sarah joined me and this time we were there for a long time while the skies just dumped water on us.  Our car was soon sitting in a mid-shin-high lake.  Some of our friends had left the hotel, but were stuck halfway into the parking lot and then were told by the volunteers to just wait there.  They eventually broke into a nearby port-a-potty though.

Eventually the Festival re-opened, and we'd missed Willi Carlisle, though Tommy Prine and Trousdale apparently did abbreviated acoustic sets under cover, which we missed too.  And this was another day that really didn't qualify as a hot summer day, though it was long.  It wasn't cold, but the temperature never took off, I was chilly for the rest of the day from being sopping wet and kept my raincoat on and zipped, and our feet were beyond soaked and developing blisters from our sandals.

OK, time to get some food (the delays and the shortage of food vendors meant long lines most of the time), and then I went right over to the Back Porch Stage for what was the act of the weekend, as far as I was concerned, the Wonder Women of Country.  This is an authentic super-group of Brennan Leigh, Kelly Willis, and Melissa Carper and they sure had me riveted in place for their whole set.  Brennan is a fantastic songwriter and played a crackling lead guitar, Kelly has one of the purest country voices I've ever heard and played backup on her acoustic, and Melissa twisted the doghouse bass into knots while wearing her emotions on her sleeve with her cracked voice.

They swapped leads and alternated some originals by the band members with classic country.  Brennan sang Carole With an E and Fly Ya To Hawaii, Kelly did Another Broken Heart and A Thousand Ways.  And they closed with Melissa singing I Have Met My Love Today from John Prine's last record.  During one song she sang, my mind was trying to classify her (this was the first time I'd seen her), and it came to me in a flash: Melissa Carper is the Butch Hancock of the band, Kelly Willis is the Joe Ely, and Brennan Leigh is the Jimmie Dale.  OK, none of my friends knew what I was talking about when I told them that, but it's the truth.

Whoah, I could have listened to them for hours, but they took off after getting as thundering an ovation as I heard at the Back Porch all weekend, and then it was time for me to take off, back to the Main Stage where Bonny Light Horseman had already started.  I considered going up front, but stayed back at our seats on the now-almost-hot day.  I want to like this band better than I do, I consider Anaïs Mitchell a world-class talent as a songwriter, and a genius singer.  They do English folk, which I love.  And Josh Kaufman can play the kind of surprising and eclectic stuff I really like (he played a weird steel banjo-guitar on one song).  But while Eric D. Johnson has his moments and sings well with Anaïs, he's often a liability, they shouldn't let Kaufman sing, and their arrangements are too quiet, non-catchy, and not always there.  For instance, they did an excellent song about a mandolin, but did not have a mandolin in the band, which was problematic.  I should mention that they had an excellent bass player in Cameron Ralston, and a good drummer.

OK now, *back* to the Back Porch Stage for Willi Carlisle, who's earlier set had been rained out.  He's a large, unclassifiable, dynamic, multi-instrumentalist Arkansan, who will keep you guessing from one song to another.  In the half-set of his that I saw he played guitar, banjo, bones, accordion, harmonica, fiddle (on an offbeat cover of Richard Thompson's Beeswing), and hambone of course.  He had a large crowd, he's a very entertaining force of nature.

But ... it was past time for me to get something for dinner and I wanted to see Joy Oladokun, who's an immensely talented young musician who reminds me of a young Tracy Chapman.  She played some songs with a small band and some solo on her acoustic guitar.  There were no instrumental flashes, just her singing her hypnotic songs, sampling her guitar, and staring into the sky, or alternately talking directly to the audience.  She dissembled too much and called herself nothing more than a "queer Kermit" when she did a sunny, Sesame Street-like song.  Hopefully, she'll be around for a long time.

Sarah was there for her set too, and we did the smart thing of leaving her set a little early and I took our chairs back to the car.  We knew there was only a slim chance we'd stick around for the Fleet Foxes set, and we didn't want to repeat the mess we'd found ourselves in yesterday, where we couldn't locate our chairs in the crowd!

Ack, it was then time to hurry down to the Deans Beans Stage for the incredible Mdou Moctar.  I have never seen anyone play guitar like that, be it Derek Trucks, Molly Tuttle, Stanley Jordan, or whomever.  Moctar is a lefty and played a gray Strat, accompanied by the best bass player of the Festival, a rhythm guitarist who's arm almost fell off he was strumming so fast, and the best drummer of the Festival.  But Moctar is phenomenal and you couldn't take your eyes off him!  I couldn't believe that he could be so fast and dexterous without a pick, with just his fingers and his thumb, which he used most often.  And seeing his other hand work the fretboard was like watching someone from outer space, it was so unreal.  He played African blues/jazz, but it was beyond description.  I don't know what else to say about him, you need to listen to this guy!  All of my friends gushed about him, he's incredible.

Whew, that was quite an experience.  I texted Sarah and we met up at the actual Deans Beans coffee truck, where she was buying a cup for the next morning.  Fleet Foxes had started the last set on the Main Stage and we stuck around for a few songs.  My synopsis of them had been, "atmospheric prog-rock by relatively overrated veteran band," and that's what it was.  We liked what we heard but the other guys told us that after we left they went downhill.  Oh well.

OK, back to the hotel and soon everyone showed up, we all went out to the picnic tables, got the party lights lit, brought out the snacks and a few adult beverages, and talked and talked in the finally dry and almost chilly night.  Everyone had experienced the wet and cold I did that day, it's a good thing I had my shoes and socks and my sweatshirt!

GRF 2024, a Rainy Friday

We missed the Green River Festival last year (DeadCo claimed priority), and so were psyched to make up for it on the weekend of June 21-23 in 2024.  As referenced in previous posts, the Festival has gotten more and more popular, out-grown the site we loved at the Greenfield CC, dropped its charming hot-air balloon feature, and was ultimately sold from Signature Sounds to a Western MA concert production firm.

After all these changes, we hoped for a better-organized Festival and a great lineup.  But the lineup they announced was packed with acts I'd never heard of, and sadly featured a couple of tired veteran bands (Cake and Fleet Foxes) and a journeyman folk singer (Gregory Alan Isakov) as headliners.  Not a good lineup, but I determined to make the best of it, did some research, wrote down notes and grades in a spreadsheet and sent it to our friends for their edification, and felt I was pretty prepared.

Dave had to skip this year (he sat with the cats instead and we gave his ticket to Aldo), but Sarah and I prepared the usual stuff and then hit the road for Greenfield, on a beautiful late morning on the first full day of Summer, that had some dire rain/thunderstorm forecasts for the afternoon.  Most of the nation had been suffering through a heat wave, and the forecast was also dire on that score, predicting humid 90s even out in Greenfield.  What else is new for the GRF though?

We stopped at The People's Pint in downtown Greenfield for lunch.  I had an excellent plate of blackened shrimp tacos with beans and rice, and a couple of their beers.  Then out to Shelburne Falls to check in at the Red Rose.  We'd been texting with our friends all along, and they were right behind us, checking in themselves when we left for the 3:00 gates open.

As anticipated, the new owners have made a few changes to the Festival, with mixed outcomes.  A problem with the Franklin County Fairgrounds setup the last few years has been sound leakage between the stages.  They addressed this by moving the Main Stage a bit left and the second stage (Deans Beans) way farther back.  They eliminated the Green House Stage to allow for a more expansive Deans Beans setup, and lined up the food vendors so they'd form a consistent sound block.  They also changed the schedule so that big acts at the Main Stage did not step on quieter acts at the other stages.  These changes were successful.

One key thing that they did not change was excellent sound engineering.  This has always been a strength of the Festival and, though they had greatly shrunk the "low chairs" area that we favored and moved the Main Stage soundboard farther back, the sound at all three stages I was at was as good as ever.  I did not hear inadvertent feedback or dropped channels even once all weekend, and you could tell by the artists' reaction during their soundchecks that they were very pleased with the technical crews.  The two big stages had large VIP sections (which didn't have good sightlines), but very few VIPs.

They apparently had made things not as great for food and drink vendors, and there was less variety.  They had dropped Berkshire Brewing, the excellent beer vendor who served fresh drafts (including iconic Ginger Libation), and replaced them with a couple of not-best and expensive canned beers, as well as many varieties of hard seltzer/fruit drinks.  Yuck!  There were fewer food vendors, though the best ones were still there.

Also, one of the best things about the old Festival was the program they issued for free, with advertisements from the sponsors and with well-written thumbnails of all the acts.  But there was no printed program this year.  This was a huge failure, and so my spreadsheet was a remarkable success.  Several people printed it out and it was consulted very often.  I'd given a short description of every band (examples: "four weird white guys doing simplistic, straight ahead rock," "three loud chicks singing in unison, not bad") and a grade from "yes" to "no" with several gradients in between.  I thought people would make fun of me for over-obsessing, but there was remarkable agreement with my reviews, and the guidance was vital.

So anyway, we'd gotten there a bit after 3:00 and set up left of the soundboard at the Main Stage.  We admired the "Cake" brought by our neighbors, split up to check out the craft vendors and the stinky drinks selection, and then I ended up at the Back Porch Stage for Fantastic Cat at 4:00.  This was the "straight ahead rock" of my spreadsheet, Anthony D'Amato's current band, and they were excellent!  They wore cheap suits of different colors and white bucks and were loud and greasy.  The Festival was off to a rocking start.

But suddenly it came to a stop.  Jim Olsen (Signature Sounds was still very involved with the Festival, hosting the Back Porch Stage) interrupted the band in the middle of their fourth(?) song and told us lightning was on the way, everything was on hold, and the Festival was now under a "shelter" order.  I screwed for the car and had a beer there, and soon the lightning came in and the rain poured down.  Most of our friends were still back at the hotel and I texted them to stay there.

But then it started clearing and Sarah texted me that Fantastic Cat was still playing!  The volunteers (who didn't get good guidance from the management) let me back into the Fairgrounds, and I caught a few great acoustic tunes from Fantastic Cat.  They rotated between different places in the crowd and swapped instruments, this must have been planned as a contingency and was really good.  They did some great ensemble singing and then closed with a singalong of Ricky Nelson's Garden Party.

They ended and I hurried over to the Main Stage, where Oh He Dead were closing up their abbreviated set.  They're a soul band with some nice harmonies, would have liked to see more of them.

But soon it was time to head back to the Back Porch for the latest incarnation of progressive bluegrass band Twisted Pine.  The band is still headed by Dan Bui on mandolin and Kathleen Parks on fiddle and vocals, but now has Chris Sartori on bass (and excellent whistle) and the astounding Anh Phung on flute.  This was great, eclectic stuff!  I've seen them many times before, but had never seen Phung (who was rocking a corset and lots of eye shadow).  She was a dynamo on the flute and didn't excel on every song, but was aggressive and mixed perfectly.  They had a fantastic setlist too, alternating short, spacy songs and longer, well-arranged ones intertwined with samples, some of them traditional tunes.  They opened with Bill Monroe's The One I Love Is Gone and closed with the song of the set, John Hartford's Long Hot Summer Day.

The Festival was back on schedule, and I grabbed some food at La Veracruzana and went back to the Main Stage for Lawrence.  I'd followed them early in their career and then lost touch, but they're still out on the road and did a really fun set.  They're a large, soul-pop band with two saxes and a trombone, doing songs with good hooks.  And they're headed by a brother and sister, who are so comfortable with each other their ease translates to a fun, mellow show.

It was getting late, but I really wanted to see The Nude Party back over at the Back Porch.  Most of our group was there too, and we (mostly) all voted them as the band of the day.  They're a young rock band wearing embroidered jean jackets with a very good singer up front with an acoustic guitar.  They've got a great LA-country feel to their songs, featuring an excellent steel player, a great hollow-bodied Gibson rocking the leads, a mean Telecaster playing rhythm, a drummer, and a percussionist who fills in on keys.  At times they almost channeled the Doors, especially when they turned up the reverb on the piano, which would hammer out the lead while the singer frowned at everybody.

OK, now it was really late after a long day.  Sarah and I wanted to stay for a few tunes from Cake, but it had suddenly gotten so dark we couldn't find our chairs at the Main Stage!  Finally got oriented and found them, but after a few songs we decided it was time to call it a night.  Cake was pretty good, as I say, they're veterans who know what they're doing, and they had the crowd dancing and grooving.

Got back to the Red Rose and washed the grime and suntan lotion (that hadn't been needed) off my legs and thankfully changed to shoes and socks.  Though we'd been prepared for roasting, the day had been rainy and gloomy and never got very warm.  We waited up but no one else was back yet and we were toast, so soon to sleep.

Friday May 24 – Back to Boston

So sad to leave our relatives, and their lovely house!  And we were dreading the long trip back, though we were eager to see our kitties and Dave again.  Did some last packing and trip prep, then SarahP and Jim drove us up to Arnos Grove for the long tube ride back to Heathrow Terminal 5.  Hugged goodbye and then hurried in, and the journey started off on the wrong foot, literally.  Sarah’s rolling suitcase tripped her, and she hit the deck in Arnos Grove.  A TFL employee hurried over, but she was ok.  And we re-reminded ourselves that we didn’t need to hurry.

Believe it or not, Heathrow was a madhouse.  We checked our bags with no problem, then waited in a long security line, and finally were lucky to grab a table at around noon at a packed J.D. Wetherspoon outlet and breathe for a while.  We had a fine beer/cider and paninis.  We were on British Air 0213, scheduled to leave at 14:40, but they hadn’t posted our gate yet.  I checked again when I got a second beer and told Sarah that I had some good news and some bad news.  The good news was that the gate had been posted, but the bad news was that it was miles away and we’d have to take another shuttle to get to it.

Oh well, hoisted up our luggage again and trundled down to the right place, where we got the right train, and finally got to the right gate, where we found a seat and waited some more.  And that was just the beginning of waiting!  Time to board at last.  This time we were in the middle foursome (again) of the second-to-last row, and we were next to a family with three very young kids.  One of them kicked a glass of wine over on Sarah about halfway through the flight, but the parents generally did a heroic job of helping the kids through the painful experience of trans-Atlantic travel.  And I was on the aisle at least.

But after we were fully boarded, we continued to sit and sit and sit at the gate.  I had started watching The Barbie Movie, but it was more than halfway over, and we were still at the gate!  The pilot eventually came on the intercom, a little miffed, and said that since it was such a crowded day at Heathrow we had to get “wing walkers” to help us taxi through the airport, and they weren’t showing up.  They finally did show up and we got going, but we then had to taxi for another half hour or so before taking off at last, about two hours after we were scheduled to.

Luckily there wasn’t a strong jet stream that day and by the time we made landfall over Newfoundland and then landed at Logan at last, we’d made up much of that time and were not far after the scheduled 5:00PM arrival.  Long line at immigration, but it moved quickly for us natives, and then baggage retrieval was quick, and customs was just a couple of officials smiling at people and asking a few questions if you looked suspicious.  Walked past some people blowing up an air mattress for some reason, then got outside and we were back in Boston on a hot, sunny day.

Waited for the Logan Express bus, and realized what was going on.  The sidewalk we were on was right in front of the wing of the International Terminal that they’ve devoted to housing immigrants.

The bus arrived after not that long and we were whisked through surprisingly light rush hour traffic up to the Anderson RTC, where Dave was waiting.  Wrestled the big suitcases into the back of Olive, and then made it back home.  Boy were we glad to see the kitties safe and sound, and they were even more glad to see us!

So how do I sum this up?  It was a very ambitious vacation, covering three distinct phases (Scotland, London, Norfolk), all of which were fantastic.  We did, saw, experienced, and enjoyed, many great things.  I hope to never forget the beauty of Western Scotland in Spring, the awesomeness of seeing the clocks in Greenwich, or the gentle ease of rural Norfolk.  But a lot of time and effort was spent on travel, and I could feel myself getting older by the minute as we sat or stood or bent double (when the tube was crowded) through endless trains, planes, and automobiles, as well as busses, shuttles, lifts, escalators, people movers, stairs, tunnels, and ramps.  It was wonderful and I’d do it again, but maybe not for a bit.  And of course, the best thing was visiting family and friends, and seeing first-hand once more that the world really is filled with good, friendly people.

Thursday May 23 – London a Last Time

Another round of packing the next morning, and trying to clean out the last yogurt, fruit, and perishables from the frig.  Mickey and family and friends were going to take over the house that coming weekend, and so preparations for that were mixed in.  Took some last pictures of their beautiful house and garden, and then it was time to pile back into the Kia Sportage for a return to London on yet another nice Spring day.

We retraced our route back to the Northern Circular Road, got stuck in city traffic as expected, and then finally made it back to the house in time for lunch in the sunny back garden.  That afternoon was spent doing some final packing of the large suitcases (SarahE was able to fit Mom’s embroidery in hers), and a few errands up on the high street.

The main thing was getting provisions for our dinner that night with Mollie and Leon.  They came over after work and we were very glad to see them.  We had a great dinner and loved meeting Leon for the first time.  Great to see Mollie again too, and we all had lots to say about the political situation.  Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had just called for a July 4th general election, and this could be a pivotal one for the UK.

Mollie and Leon had work the next day and so didn’t stay late, and we finally went to bed ourselves.

Wednesday May 22 – Water and Ducks

There was lots of rain overnight, and the weather wasn’t much better in the morning and so we decided on a lazy, local day.  There was an entertaining pheasant in the garden (and feeder), SarahP had an online Pilates class, and I had a good book.  Some errands (such as a new kettle) were run as well.

After lunch though, the rain had turned into just a mist, and SarahE and I wanted to go exploring.  The local pub had made up some placards describing various walks around the village, and we chose one and then set off.  We strolled into the town, and then turned into a small eco-garden, where we saw overflowing ponds, ducks, geese, and lots of goose and duck shit.  Many of the waterfowl had young ones, and we were especially entertained by the greylag geese, the Egyptian ducks, and all their young ones.

We continued up the lane to the Great Massingham airfield, where drug smugglers are rumored to land once in a while, though the airfield is defunct.  Walked along the old airstrips in the nice and misty day, watching birds and trees, and then turned down Mill Lane back to Station Road back towards the center of town.  Stopped by the Great Massingham village hall to inspect the newly cleaned tennis courts (no one was using them!) and the bowls court.

Walked around St. Mary’s church and then finally to our real destination (if we had one), the Dabbling Duck pub.  This is the local in Great Massingham, and we had a very relaxing ale and cider, while watching and listening to a few of the local denizens.  The day turned brighter and brighter, and a few hardy ones actually sat outside.  Eventually made it back to the house, where the remainder of the new vegetables were being planted.

We had reservations at the other pub they’d talked up for that evening.  And after changing to our dinner clothes, we took off for another great meal at the George & Dragon in Castle Acre, which is the home pub for the local brewery, Duration Beer.  We were seated at a small table in their dark and book-lined dining room, and SarahE and I couldn’t resist splitting their mixed grill for two, which included a jerk half chicken, wild boar sausages, steak, ribs, and some great onion rings.

But we couldn’t linger and rushed back to the house.  The final episode of that year’s MasterChef was on that night, and we were kind of excited.  Brin ended up edging out Chris and Louise, though they all produced fantastic menus.  Watched another installment of Race Around the World after that, and then to bed.

Tuesday May 21 – Blickling Estate

Something they have all over the place in Europe are preserved “country houses,” sometimes with beautiful gardens.  There aren’t many of these in the States, Castle Hill is the nearest we get in the Boston area, though this is put to shame by some places in Europe.  SarahE and I really wanted to go see one, especially because that would mean a non-challenging walking day, and May should be a great time of year.

SarahP and Jim were scheduled to play tennis that morning, but the courts were being cleaned and so that was called off.  They thought going to a country estate was a good idea though, and we considered a few.  They are National Trust members and had a great guidebook that we consulted, and we settled on the Blickling Estate.

Had another excellent breakfast that sunny morning, and then headed East on the A1065 to Fakenham, and then onto the A148, passing Little Snoring and Great Snoring, to the B1354 through Briston, and eventually to Blickling Road.

Another pretty full car park, though many of the people were there just to walk the extensive trail network around the 4600 acres of the grounds.  We paid our entry fees (the lady asked if I was from Holland), and then strolled down the path past the local, to the grand entrance to the estate.  The house itself was not yet open for the day, but we were fine with passing through an atrium out to the formal garden, which is 55 acres itself.

The gardens are impressive, and they’re maintained in great shape.  I couldn’t believe how close they mow some lawns in England, while keeping the grass healthy.  And the massive rows of yew bushes were trimmed exactly.  We just skimmed some verbose interpretive signs (they were filthy rich and had nothing better to do than boss gardeners around and insist that their gardens be au courant, on the few occasions that they left the city for their country house), wandered past some lovely beds of roses and peonies in the Parterre, and then up the winding path to the Temple.  They had some exotic Atlas cedars and redwoods there, like the ones we’d seen in Kew the other day.  They also had plenty of English oaks.

We walked back up to the huge house from the gardens, and around the back of the house to the walled garden, which we found even more impressive.  They grow a large amount of vegetables there, possibly enough to feed a hungry group of aristocrats.  But the most amazing thing is their collection of fruit trees, many varieties of apples, pears, and cherries, which are all pruned and trained to form trellises over the pathways.  And fully half of the walled garden is not planted at this time.  I said hi to a gardener, whom we’d run into again later.

OK, time for the house!  It’s got a grand entrance, a portcullis, and then a dark and spooky entrance hall.  The National Trust really does a great job, we’d seen several of their properties before, and they had an extensive staff of very knowledgeable docents and thorough documentation in each room, many of which were remarkably restored and filled with period furniture.  The Hall was built in 1616 and the history of the estate is actually kind of interesting.  The money that was poured into it sure must have supported a lot of people and continues to do so through the aegis of the National Trust.

This was a more interesting tour than I’d anticipated.  They have restored some of the kitchens and bedrooms (with hidden en suite bathrooms) to how they were when the house was last active, between the wars.  And some of the massive parlors and dining rooms date to the Tudor period.  Details such as the English oak paneling and trim, the original or restored wood floors and tapestries, the paintings, and the grand halls are really worth seeing.  I kept on struggling with trying to imagine how it must have been to live or visit there but could not.

The most impressive of all the huge rooms is the well-lit library, which is filled with 14,000 volumes, “one of the most historically significant collections of manuscripts and books in England.”  Maintenance of the collection is ongoing, and a team of book restorers were working in the library at the time.

Wow, enough of that!  I for one found the house fascinating but was ready to get outside at last.  We’d all wondered about the weathervane on the main house, and I found out from the docents that it was meant to be a bull, like many of the emblems we’d seen on the walls inside.  The ancestors of Anne Boleyn (which name derives from “bull” (or vice versa)) had owned the estate before the Hall was built, and when the nouveau riche Hobarth family took it over they wanted to show off the heritage of the wife of the king, thus the bulls.

What to do about lunch?  They had two cafés, and a pub in the middle (the local we’d passed earlier).  Jim, SarahE, and I lounged at a picnic table outside the Bucks Arms with drinks, while SarahP detoured back to the car for a change of clothes.  We then went back to the front entrance of the estate for lunch in the Stables café.  Pleasant lunch, but wouldn’t you think that a “sausage roll” would have a sausage in it instead of being just pastry flavored like a sausage?

We wanted to check out some of the walks in the lovely grounds of the estate.  It was a great day for a walk, and we set off over the fields and into the woods.  We found a 600-year-old lime tree, but we got a little lost.  We thought we were on a path that would lead us to the Mausoleum, but the path dead-ended in what was apparently a foresters’ work area.  We bush-whacked a bit and could see the right path, and a guy on the path ended up shouting directions to us as to how to get back to it (I picked up a few nettles in doing so).  It turned out that he was the same gardener I’d exchanged pleasantries with earlier.  He volunteers in the garden and often walks the paths with his wife and dog, who were both very polite as well.  Anyway, saw the Mausoleum (it was not that impressive) and then wound our way back to the car park.

OK, we were toast and ready to hit the road back.  SarahP and Jim were anxious to stop at the Fakenham Garden Centre though, and SarahE and I wandered around there while they grilled an employee about vegetables.  The garden center carried the same line of battery-operated garden tools that I use, but we didn’t buy any.

The really fun thing about the garden center was the three-wheeled sports car we saw in the car park when we got back outside.  Two ladies with helmets (this must have been the Fakenham edition of Top Gear) came out, gracefully consented to us taking pictures, and drove off.

Finally back to the house after an adventurous excursion, and some of the new vegetable plants got planted while some of us recovered.  SarahP and Jim cooked us dinner, and then it was time for more Cabo and bed.

Monday May 20 – Birds and Seals

We’d been to Titchwell Marsh on our trip back in 2009.  But again, there was lots of winter weather involved and the trip was not entirely successful.  So we were psyched to try it again!

SarahP had some great home-made granola, and this made an excellent breakfast with some vanilla yogurt and grapes.  She also had gotten me some very good green tea, which has recently been legalized in England.  And SarahE tried a gluten-free cereal Jim had gotten and was instantly hooked on that.  So it was a good breakfast, and after that we hit the road for the North Sea.

Stopped at the store in the center of Great Massingham first and got some snacks, cheddar crisps and digestive biscuits.  Then headed North past Houghton Hall and up cross-country to Thornham and the entrance to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds property in Titchwell Marsh.

This car park was already pretty full too, even on a Monday morning.  But we weren’t surprised by this, it was a great time of year for watching birds, the weather was partly overcast and not too windy, and all of us older people were at the beach on a Spring day.  The visitor center was having some work done, but they’d set up an admission table outside, and we were soon paid up and walking out through the woods, over the dike out to the salt marsh.

They’ve constructed a network of dikes to create freshwater lagoons for migratory birds, and have some “hides” for people to watch the birds.  We saw lots of expensive optics being deployed, as you would expect at a wildlife refuge.  We also saw a lot of wonderful birds, many with broods.  I won’t try to catalog them all, because I’d fail miserably.  But the most interesting to me were the black-headed gulls, the graylag geese, and the avocets.  As we proceeded out towards the sea, over the main dike, the weather got windier and colder and I needed my windbreaker and gloves, though some people were suffering in shorts and t-shirts.

The path eventually led out onto the beach, over a line of dunes, and it was low tide again.  The exposed beach was massive, and we immediately walked out to the edge of the sea.  There was a huge array of wind turbines in the middle distance to our left, and another huge array, hull-down in the far distance to our right.  In front of us were low-tide ledges interspersed with seaweed, lots of small shells, and holes for clams and worms.  It was a lovely beach on a partly cloudy, slightly windy day.  I’ve never seen more razor clam shells in my life, it was impossible to walk on the beach without crunching them underfoot.  There were several old hunks of metal that, 80 years ago, had been WWII defenses.

We meandered down the beach to the East, towards where it dipped down to a deep, winding wash where the dikes and the marsh let out into the sea, which separated the PSPB site from Brancaster Beach.  We walked up the wash a bit to see the common seals (called harbor seals in North America) and grey seals which take a break there.  There were about 25 seals, sleeping and/or flapping their tails at each other, having a rest at low tide.  I could imagine that when the incoming tide rushed in over the wide beach and filled the wash, the seals would take off again for the sea and a nice dinner.

Walked back up the beach past ruins of a WWII tank, crunching over shells, and to the entrance back to the dikes over the marsh.  It actually became a hot day as we left the sea and re-entered the woods, and I stripped off several layers of clothing.  We detoured down the Fen Trail, which became a boardwalk path, out over the swamp, where we saw even more varieties of birds, flowers, and reeds, then made it back to the visitor center (I bought a hat) and the car park.

Great walk, but we were getting a little peckish and were glad we had snacks in the car.  Drove back to Great Massingham for a late lunch, which we ate out in their lovely garden on what had become a sunny, gentle day inland.

SarahP and Jim had mentioned two very good pubs near them, and we went to one for dinner, the Rose and Crown in Harpley.  We got a very nice table in their almost deserted garden room; we had a great meal, and I had a couple of local beers.  They had a curry special, which Jim and I went for, and I found it excellent.  A very leisurely dinner, then we settled our bill and took off for some Cabo and/or TV before bed.

Sunday May 19 – Beautiful Massingham

We’d managed to get another round of needed re-packing in there and were ready for yet another change of climate.  It probably wasn’t going to be as cold in Norfolk as it had been in Scotland, but it hadn’t been very cold there anyway.  Oh well, you never know what you’re going to get in the Spring, and so we brought a little of everything in our packs for Great Massingham and were glad we did.

Another breakfast of tea, cereal, yogurt, and fruit.  Jim and I went out to the good old Tesco to fill the Kia Sportage with petrol and then we piled in and hit the road for the Northeast, though traffic works tried to delay us.  It actually wasn’t that bad a trip across the Northern Circular Road (the A406) a few miles over to the M11, and then accelerated to highway speed up to where we branched onto the A11 in Great Chesterford.  We eventually made it to Swaffham (notorious for Liz Truss), and did a big food shopping trip in Waitrose.  The plan was for Jim to make a few meals (chili con carne that night), but to have another few meals in some of the great pubs they have in Norfolk.

The last town before Great Massingham is the lovely town of Castle Acre, and then we were suddenly there, a little familiar and a lot different.  We’d been to their house once, on our trip in 2009, and at that point there was snow and ice everywhere, one of the biggest snowfalls they’ve ever had around there.  Nothing had been in bloom, and we didn’t have much of a chance to hang out in their garden.  This time was very different and SarahE and I were just delighted with the sunny day and the incredible number of plants, vegetables, and some trees that they have in their garden.  So many things were in bloom or just a little before or after it!  I especially liked the hollyhocks, reminiscent of the hollyhocks we had by the kitchen door in Westport when we were growing up.

Their narrow garden goes straight back a long way, and at the end they have a garden house, with a new deck and a great room on the second floor that could be used as a remote bedroom.  The garden house overlooks their neighbor’s field, which was planted with something I couldn’t identify and goes to the horizon.  Out in front, across the road is another field and this is used by livestock.  OMG, more sheep!!!  These were very diverse though, a mix of white sheep, black sheep, gray sheep, Anglicans, and lambs.

After putting food and clothes away and touring the garden, it was time for lunch and then an excursion.  We drove down to Castle Acre and started off by turning down Pye’s Lane, parking where the barbican used to be, and exploring the 11th century castle.  Again, we’d been here in 2009 but that was a lot different.

We walked around inside the ruins of the old house, and then climbed up on the walls and walked around the path.  It was a beautiful, sunny and warm day by then, great weather for an outing in the English countryside.  We continued past the castle and down Bailey Street to Blind Lane, where we passed through a fence and walked along the River Nar.  Castle Acre is at the junction of the River Nar and Peddars Way, an old Roman road.

The Nar is a chalk stream, featured in an article in the May 2024 National Geographic.  It’s in the process of being restored, though I doubt it will be restored to the major waterway it was in the medieval period, linking Castle Acre to the Little Ouse.  The walk along it is lovely, with many kinds of wildflowers (and mud) and aquatic weeds waving in the current in the cold stream.  We followed it downstream and saw many people enjoying it, including a group of kids swimming and horsing around in the water, whose parents really needed to be paying better attention.

After a stretch along the river, we took the path around the back of the massive Castle Acre Priory complex, another 11th century construction that is mostly ruined but still used to some extent.  Some of the architectural detail in the ruined old buildings is remarkable.  But mostly what we were doing is trying not to step in sheep shit or get swarmed by rabbits (some were very active).  We looped back by St. James Church (not named after St. Mary), and through their graveyard, then up High Street through the center of town and back via the old bailey to the castle and on the other side, the car park.  We passed a house they might have bought when they were house hunting, but they ended up with a better one.

A great walk!  It definitely tired us out (is that what we were trying to do?).  But Jim managed to stay on his feet long enough to make dinner, and we all contributed by eating it.  We dismantled the framing of an embroidery Mom made back in the 80s so SarahE and I could (hopefully) fit it in our suitcases and bring it back to the States with us on the plane.  A little more TV and/or cards and then it was time for bed.

Saturday May 18 – Sitar in Church

By the time I came down for breakfast on Saturday, N was already in his chair, exercising all possibilities with the food in front of him as a toddler will do.  Sarah and Jim had thought of a couple of things for us all to do that day, but they involved getting the bus, etc., and we didn’t know if such a huge expedition was warranted.  So we decided to first of all go to the playground and then see what else we felt like doing.

Got the right jackets on and got N into his stroller, and then headed down the street and up into Friary Park.  The morning was a little overcast and held a slight hint of rain, but also hinted at clearing up.

On the way to the playground, SarahE and I gawked at their Statue of Peace.  This is supposedly a statue of Queen Victoria in the guise of “peace,” and is dedicated to Edward VII, who was known as “the great peacemaker” (I never called him that) because he strengthened relations with France after England had been annoyed with them for years.

Besides the nifty statue, they have a great playground there.  N tried all kinds of playground contraptions, and I was tempted to try them too.  If I’d been younger, I might have.  Best of all was a rope jungle gym; he was able to balance across one part but decided not to venture onto the next part, which was a little too precarious.  Next time!  He also did a great job piloting a ship through an imagined storm while several adults rocked it for him.  When he got tired out, we checked out some road re-paving equipment parked nearby (he’s enthralled by all kinds of trucks) and went for a stroll around the park and then back to the house.

Had some lunch and N took a nap, and I decided that was a really good idea, so I did too.  We were going to a concert that night!  But after a nice nap I went out for a constitutional and walked up the lane toward the North, seeing a good number of comfortable-looking houses and also a spooky church.

Soon time to hit the road … we were going to another church, but first we had to get N back home.  It was no problem getting N-in-stroller on the SL1 bus, but more of a hassle than expected transporting him down to the Arnos Grove platform and then up from the Turnpike Lane platform.  Even with four adults we needed some advice, but he wasn’t about to give us any.  He just looked worried.  Back to his house eventually, and had another nice but short visit with Hakey.

From there it was only a few blocks over to the Hornsey Lane Train Station, and we just caught a Great Northern train down to the Highbury & Islington station.  We were a bit early for the concert and so took a break in a nearby pub with the imaginative name of “Brewhouse.”  The place doesn’t get very good grades because one cask beer they advertised was off (they seemed offended that someone actually wanted to order it), and they tried to forget our order.

Oh well, time to get out of there and we joined the rapidly forming queue at the Union Chapel on what had ended up as a warm, sunny day.  Chloe and Graham were meeting us for the concert and were already up near the front of the queue.  We were very excited to catch up with Chloe and to meet Graham for the first time.  They’re such a nice couple of people!

What we were going to see was an installment in the Union Chapel concert series, with the great Niladri Kumar on sitar, accompanied by Yashwant Vaishnav on tabla.  I’d never heard of them, but was very excited, especially when I heard various people who *did* know them talking about how excited they were.  One person said he’d been trying for years to see Kumar in India to no avail, but now had a chance to see him in London.

We few attendees who had booked dinner before the concert were shown in a side door, and Graham nicely stood us to a round of drinks before we got our food, a very good chicken thigh, rice, and courgette dinner for me.  SarahP had slipped into the chapel when they opened doors and was able to save us seats in a pew almost exactly in the middle of the chapel.  As it turned out, the show didn’t start until 30 minutes after we’d thought, but that gave us plenty of time to talk.  Graham and I mostly talked sports, though I was also curious about his teaching career and his recent retirement.

Then the guys came on, tuned up, tuned up some more, played a long introduction, slowed down a bit, then speeded up a bit, then really got into it, and then *really* got into it.  Kumar showed absolutely amazing technique on the sitar, jumping around all over the keyboard, and sometimes bending sixteenth notes with his left hand having to span two feet between frets.  And Vaishnav was just as awesome on the tabla, striking it with his fingers, his thumb, or his wrist to get different sounds, and sometimes playing so fast his hands disappeared, becoming a blur of motion.  I’d seen these instruments played before, but never as the main attraction.

This was supposedly Indian classical music, but some audience members were apparently a little disappointed at what they considered more of a popular concert than a classical one.  Not us!  Some of the audience knew songs of his, and when he asked for requests, he was flooded with them.  Kumar played a wonderful mix of folky melodies and more structured rhythms.  At one point he smiled at us and played a Deep Purple riff.

And I have to say that Union Chapel is a beautiful place.  By the frequency of braziers around the nave though, I assume it gets very cold in the Winter.  And it was funny to be sitting in a church and see a neon sign saying “Bar” on the door to the parish hall.

Wow, we were gushing with Chloe and Graham about what a great concert we’d just seen, and hurrying to the tube stop.  But then SarahP stopped us short; we said a fond farewell to our friends and twisted around, heading for a bus stop for the 43, which goes all the way to Islington.  It was a quick ride past Muswell Hill up to Friern Barnet, and then a short walk back home.

Friday May 17 – Original Timepieces

Another London thing we’d never done was to go to Greenwich and see the Royal Observatory and the Maritime Museum.  Jim and SarahP were interested in doing this as well.  It had been a long time since they’d been there, and the Docklands area of London had grown up a lot since then.  This was a gorgeous, sunny Spring day, and after breakfast we got things together and set off.

Up at the corner and this time we went South on the 43 bus instead of East on the SL1.  Took this down to Highgate, past the very familiar neighborhood of Muswell Hill and Highgate Wood to the Highgate tube station on the Northern Line.  Took this down to Bank, where we switched to the Docklands Light Railroad.  This is an entertaining, open-air stretch through central London and then the Isle of Dogs peninsula, which is shot through with canals and docks, though we saw no boats there.  And as with Boston, London seems to have grown taller and taller in the time I’ve known it.  There are huge buildings everywhere, even in what used to be a maritime/industrial part of the city.

We got off at Island Gardens, a couple of stops shy of where we might have detrained, because Jim and SarahP wanted to find the pedestrian tunnel under the Thames, where they hadn’t been for a long time.  There was a slight question if it still existed, but it did and after touring the actual Island Gardens for a short time and gawking at the Old Royal Naval College across the river, we climbed down and down the stairs on the North side before the long, sloping walk under the river.  Riding bikes is supposedly not allowed there, but there were several scofflaws, and also a dank smell and a few leaks in the walls.  This freaked out SarahP a bit and she took off; we other three proceeded at our normal pace but perhaps didn’t find it as romantic an experience as it had been in the past, though the walls didn’t collapse.  Whatever, it was kind of fun and popping up right next to the Cutty Sark on a sunny day was even better.

So we wanted to go to Greenwich, but there are several sub-destinations there and some debate ensued about where we were headed.  Google maps aided our decision but led us astray twice because of construction.  And believe it or not, the place was crawling with people!  We’d chosen May for our trip partly because schools would still be in session, but this was a historic area of London on a sunny day in May and Greenwich was an anthill of not only tourists, but also of huge school groups on outings.

It was long, confusing, and hot, but we made our way up Pepys Walk, Lord Nelson Road, and King William Walk to the hill that the Observatory sits at the top of, and at last up to Flamsteed House itself, dodging South Asian tourists hogging the Prime Meridian.  We thankfully pushed past everyone and his cousin, and then paid for our entry into the Observatory, though when we got in, we found it infected by a noisy school group in the toilets.

Oh well, things became calmer when they exited, and we snapped a few pictures on the Prime Meridian and then toured the museum.  Wow, I loved this place!  It started off slow with some interpretation about the astronomers and families that had lived in Flamsteed House, and part of the interpretation stayed on this level and touched simply on time, astronomy, and the timeline of the discovery of how to calculate latitude and longitude.  But other parts of the interpretation got very detailed and the stories it told were fascinating to me, especially because I’ve read the Longitude book by Dava Sobel about John Harrison’s ordeal in solving the problem of calculating longitude.

And the absolute highlight of the museum was that they actually had the originals of Harrison’s clocks on display!  I was just tingling with fascination seeing these.  The other three saw me geeking out and diplomatically proceeded to the next few rooms before I breathlessly caught them up.  Boy, I had to tear myself away from there, I was ready to settle in until closing time.

Got back outside finally and saw some other great stuff, including a super-sundial on the deck of the Observatory.  This had suddenly become one of the first places I’d recommend to someone visiting London, though there are a lot of people there and it’s a long walk uphill on a hot day.

OK, time for lunch!  I hinted that I’d seen a few pubs on our way up from the Cutty Sark, and the others were amenable.  The first one on our way back was the Greenwich Tavern, and though the outdoor tables were all full, when we pushed inside, we got a nice table and had an excellent lunch.  I got a Niçoise salad and a pint of Brixton Reliance.

It was time to get going, and after getting twisted around looking for the tube station in the middle of the tourist wasteland around the Cutty Sark, we got back on the DLR to Bank, and then the Northern Line to King’s Cross, where we switched to the Piccadilly Line.  SarahP and Jim had been tapped to host N that night and the next day.  So they got off at Turnpike Lane to retrieve him while SarahE and I continued on up to the Arnos Grove stop.

We’d been told that there was a local there, and when we turned left out of the station, we found ourselves at the door of the Arnos Arms, which is really a pretty big and relaxing pub, with a dining room, a games room, and a garden.  It was mostly empty, and we got a beer (Abbott real ale) and a cider and relaxed for a while, tucked at a nice table behind the Dr. Who pinball machine.

Sooner than we’d expected we got a text that SarahP, Jim, and N were back, and we drank up and then headed for the SL1, and back to the house.  Had some more fun playing with N, watching Peppa Pig (which I could comment on, but will refrain), and eating dinner.  Then a little more TV after N retired, and then to bed.

Digression on Beer

All in all I had some fine beers on this trip to the UK.  I’d anticipated what had been foreshadowed on my last few trips there, that the American beer revolution would influence what’s served in the UK, but I was still shocked by the extent of this.  The American “IPA” style is all over the place, at least 50% of the beers I encountered there were so labeled, though as we all know, the American “IPA” style is far removed from what that style was originally.

I was fine with this, as I’m an “IPA” fan, and had some very good ones, though the ABV in the beers I samples was generally too low to be worthy of the American style.  The Americanization is thorough, there were even some beers labeled “West Coast IPA” and that meant California/Oregon rather than Wales.  It’s too bad this infiltration meant that English “real ale” was hard to find, but I took what opportunities I could to sample cask beers and original styles.

Here are a few beers (mostly bottled) that I found remarkable:

• Old Crafty Hen – This is a strong ale, mixed with the original formula for Old Speckled Hen, first made by the Morland Brewery and now by the Greene King conglomerate.  The maltiness is of the best English quality, and the body is thick and tasty.  This had a lot of what I like most in a beer.
• Abbott – This is the Greene King flagship and was available everywhere.  I had it on cask and in cans and it never failed.  A very solid English ale.
• Proper Job – This is a distinctive IPA made by the St. Austell Brewery, that we’ve driven by in Cornwall.
• Duration Brewing in Castle Acre makes some very good beers, some of which were available in Norfolk pubs on cask.  The ones I tested were very good, though more American than English.
• Hobgoblin – This Wychwood IPA was recommended to me in Scotland and is a thin but tasty IPA.
• Fuller’s ESB (had bottles only, never saw Fuller’s in pubs) used to be my favorite beer and is still way up on my list, as is their London Pride.
• Skye Brewing in Uig makes a number of ales, named generically like “Gold,” “Red,” and “Black.”  None I tested were worth writing home about.
• A couple of other ones worth mentioning are Eigg IPA, which I had at the Atholl House, and National Trust Kentish Pale Ale, which I had at the Blickling Estate and was made with NT Farm-raised hops, yeast, and water.  Both were tasty and delicate.
• Had many opportunities to try Brewdog products, but only tried them once or twice.  Brewdog is headquartered in Ellon, Scotland, and markets internationally.  Don’t waste your time.

One related note: draft ciders are now everywhere in the UK, and SarahE gleefully sampled quite a few.