It rained overnight, but fortunately it had stopped by morning. The weather was much colder today with a strong wind blowing off the sea.
M was surprised and delighted that the local classical music station played a piece in honour of The Queen and Prince Philip's sixty-ninth wedding anniversary today. They played Grieg's "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen". Very appropriate, and one of the pieces that we had at our wedding!
After a rather cheerless breakfast (our hostess is away for the weekend so we were on our own), we set off to drive round the "island" that is Rockport and Gloucester. The latter is a sheltered deep water inlet and, as such, was the first port established in New England in 1623, just three years after the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth. One major difference, however, was that Gloucester and later Boston were settled by Puritans or non-religious adventurers who had no interest in working with the Indians but just considered them to be ignorant savages. While the original Pilgrims of the Reformed Church lived in peace with the Indians for fifty years, the Puritans' attitude and their relentless pressure to seize the Indians' land eventually led to King Philip's War from 1675 to 1678 when the Indians revolted but were effectively wiped out or sold into slavery. A shameful story.
Having driven round the island, we set off to the Rockport seafront, know as Bear Skin Neck, in search of brunch. Yesterday, by chance we had come across a small restaurant right at the end of the street overlooking the sea. It looked really nice and M had gone in to check that they opened on Sunday morning. She had received such a warm welcome that we had resolved to return this morning. It was called "Our Place by the Sea" and, as soon as we walked in, we were recognised and again warmly welcomed. Being Sunday, and a very cold one at that, there were very few people about and for most of the time we had the place, and the four staff, to ourselves.
The food was superb. The restaurant specialises in seafood and M had an excellent clam chowder followed by a seafood omelette while R had a more traditional eggs benedict.
Afterwards, in no hurry to leave, we had a lovely conversation with the staff. As we were the only guests, they were in no hurry either! Eventually, we bade them a fond farewell and went back out into the cold wind.
The town next to Gloucester is Manchester-by-the-Sea, which the guide books recommended as being full of small shops that open all year (about half the shops here are closed for the season now). So, we drove to Manchester but were rather disappointed to find that there were very few shops and not a coffee shop or tea room in sight. Instead, we saw a very new and large hotel called the Beaufort so we went in and had coffee and tea sitting at their bar overlooking the ocean. The sea was running very high and the wind was whipping up the waves, which were crashing onto the breakwaters causing tall plumes of spray. We did, however, find a small beach so that we could get close to the ocean without getting wet.
So we are now back in our B&B and trying to get ourselves organised for our return trip tomorrow evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment