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White Mountains, New
Hampshire
27th August - 2nd September
2005 |
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The road trip from Muscongus, where we left Anju
and Kindred Spirit rafted together on a mooring, to Pan and Lowri's house,
near Lancaster in New Hampshire, took about four hours.
Naturally we had to make a couple of stops to pick up refreshments on the
way. First we called at a fishmonger to pick up
"steamers", a local shellfish delicacy which we planned to sample
later for dinner. We took a short break for lunch at a local
bakery where we enjoyed sampling the pies, before a final stop to
"provision" at the supermarket for our week's visit at the
house. Living in the mountains is just like living on a boat, where
you have to plan ahead!
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We finally arrived at our beautiful holiday home
in the White Mountains and Phil was brave enough to cool off in the
"swimming pool" with Pan, Lowri and a multitude of tadpoles!
(Christine chickened out). The "swimming pool" was a
beautiful natural pond they had created in their garden for just such
eventualities, using fresh stream water - no nasty chlorine here!
All the "exercise" worked up an
appetite and after a relaxing yet challenging pre-dinner drink (two people
in a hammock is always a challenge!), we tucked into the steamers, small
mussel-type shellfish which had been cooked by steaming. This
was a first for the team from Anju and the steamers went down very
well. (Unfortunately in Phil's case they also came back up well
later too!).
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Ollie wonders who the crazy
guy behind him is....
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Precarious Drinks Party ...
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Dissecting the Steamers....
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While Phil recovered, we decided to take it easy
next day, after all it was supposed to be a holiday. Meanwhile
our hosts put us to shame by striking out on a serious bike
ride. Some time later they returned, unfortunately looking like
drowned rats as the heavens had decided to open.
Pan and Lowri grew many of their own
vegetables and herbs in their garden and we had lessons in
self-sufficiency. On our first day, in the blazing sun, Phil was
taught the intricacies of harvesting sweetcorn, which never tasted as good
as it did straight from Pan's vegetable garden. Christine wasn't
so lucky the day she was sent a-harvesting and the harvest, Christine and
Ilsa, the dog, all returned pre-washed!
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Phil Harvesting Sweetcorn
with Pan
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Whose wellies are these
anyway?
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We found plenty to amuse ourselves just around
the house. The novelty of living in a house was wonderful and we
particularly enjoyed taking as many hot showers as we liked for as long as
we liked, being able to do the laundry right at home, surf the internet,
watch cable TV. There was the serious scrabble tournament which
took place during our stay, after the first two games the scores were
Kindred Spirit 1 - Anju 1 (the scandal involving the blanks which had
letters on the back will not be further mentioned!). Finally
Phil won the decider with his annoying tendency to find seven letter
words...
Once the weather improved we were taken for
walks by Ilsa, as we needed our exercise. It was perfectly
obvious that she was used to walking much faster than we were meandering and
could find her way home much better.
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Ilsa waiting impatiently
for us on the walk and we hadn't even made it out of the garden yet!
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Pan proudly gave us a tour of his pride and joy,
the treehouse. The treehouse was so luxurious that it would have
been tempting to sleep there if it hadn't been for the draw of the hot
showers, flush toilets and cable TV in the main house!
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The treehouse.....
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....somewhere for the big
kids to play!
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While our hosts had to go to work, they kindly
lent us a car to take a couple of road trips. First we
went over the border into Vermont and ticked off another state.
The drive was very scenic through wooded and unspoilt countryside and we
were even back in time to cook dinner for the tired workers.
Another trip took us through the White
Mountains Park, past Mount Washington among other mountains named after
Presidents. We took a walk recommended by Pan and Lowri, up to visit a
waterfall in the woods. It was during this walk that we
ran into our first "squirrel-phobe" (there must be a scientific
word for that). We encountered a family taking the same walk and
their daughter was being terrorised by cheeky squirrel, which was obviously
well used to tourists and their picnics. The squirrel was
admittedly persistent in his hunt for snacks and not in the least deterred
by the hysterics of the squirrel-phobe, who everyone tried desperately to
calm.
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The marauding
terror-squirrel and his waterfall
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We spotted more interesting local wildlife as we
headed on another drive to check out one of the area's famous covered river
bridges. This time it was Lowri out on a training bike ride during her
lunch hour and we struggled to keep up with her in the car!
Before we had to return to Anju, Lowri
managed to find time to give us a fascinating tour of her friends'
traditional water powered wood mill that provided timber for their
house building business.
Soon it was time to leave, before we became
too accustomed to the luxuries of living in a house.
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With sad hearts we had to say goodbye to the
beautiful house which had become our temporary home and to our kind hosts,
Pan and Lowri, who were by now good friends. Hopefully one day
we'll find a way to offer them the generosity and hospitality they'd shown
us.
We'd been a little concerned about the safety
of our boats as the remnants of hurricane Katrina passed up the east coast
after reeking havoc on the Gulf Coast. Pan's local contact
kindly checked on the two boats during the bad weather but luckily the wind
wasn't very strong by the time the storm reached Maine. It was
still a relief to see Anju safely waiting for us on the mooring buoy when we
got back.
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