Three States and Only One Police Incident!

Constantly travelling, it is difficult to tell whether the weather is changing due to the time of year, or due to the different climatic conditions in the area that you are visiting. Regardless, the weather during our last few days in Boston had been uncharacteristically good for the area at this time of year, tipping over 30°C on at least one day. Sadly this changed on the day that we pulled out of Ash’s driveway, and our drive to the coast was against the background of driving rain and grey skies in all directions. The drive to the end Cape Cod, whilst undoubtedly beautiful, seemed frivolous and unnecessary in view of our depleted budget and limited time in America, and so we decided to drive along the surrounding sections of coastline that didn’t take us so far out of our way. We had now agreed with our shipping agents to drop Jim off at Baltimore docks in thirty days time, and so we had begun, for the first time on this trip, to concern ourselves with how long we were spending in each place.

On the day that we left Boston, we drove along the east facing section of coast, immediately south of the city, starting in Hull, passing through Cohasset, and leaving the coast near Scituate. The coast is rugged and beautiful, and the small villages (and the weather) reminded me of those I might find on the coast of Dorset in the UK. Sadly the unrelenting rain put paid to any chance of a decent walk, an so instead we enjoyed the popular American pastime of driving to beautiful places, stopping for a few minutes without getting out of the vehicle, before continuing on to somewhere else. We spent the night in a quiet area of woodland, and in the morning continued south.

We spent the following day exploring the southern tip of the Massachusetts coastline, stopping for a while in Falmouth and Woods Hole near to the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Both were charming and remained surprisingly unspoilt by the tourist tat that fills the towns further down the cape.

In the afternoon we continued along the coast, before stopping in New Bedford where we spent the night. At around 2am we received our fifth police visit since leaving Canada; we spent a few minutes placating the officers with polite conversation and thankfully were allowed to spend the rest of the night in peace. In the morning we took a short stroll around the docks and town centre, but we were soon ready to move on again. New Bedford has an attractive historic centre, but it is clearly an active port, and like most port towns, it suffers aesthetically.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the city of Providence in Rhode Island, visiting the state capitol and the Browne College campus, and wandering around the grand city centre. Not wishing to endure another interrupted night and a conversation with a police officer at a time that I’d rather be asleep, we moved the truck in the evening to a local Walmart parking lot.

In the morning, not being adjacent to a park in which we could walk Boris, we looked on our map for a large area of green space, and drove the 30 miles to the Arcadia Management Area. It is difficult to assess when looking at a patch of green on our map, how it will turn out in real life. A patch of green is just as likely to be an area of impenetrable and undeveloped forest as it is to be a neatly manicured baseball field. The Arcadia Management Area turned out to be a large expanse of forest and lakes, covered in a massive network of well signed and maintained hiking trails. We easily found a lakeside trailhead from which we could hike, and managed to tire Boris out far more thoroughly than is possible in a city park.

Later in the morning we continued west along the coast, arriving in New Haven, Connecticut in the early afternoon. We hadn’t even finished reversing into our chosen parking spot, when we were approached by a passer-by, curious about our truck. The person we met turned out to be Doug, a great guy who worked at the local fire station, and having chatted for less than five minutes he offered to let us park overnight in the station car park. I have heard of round-the-world cyclists relying on the generosity of the international firefighting community to provide them with a place to pitch their tent and chain their bike, but this was the first time we had been on the receiving end of this generosity. The weekend staff in the fire station were all as welcoming as Doug, and we were offered more hospitality than we felt comfortable accepting.

Our first day in New Haven was marred by torrential rain. We visited the fantastic, and free, Yale Gallery of British Art until it closed, but it was still raining hard when we returned to the street and so we took the opportunity to hide in one of New Haven’s famous pizza restaurants. New Haven has one of the oldest Italian communities in America, and the city is famed for the quality of the pizzas on offer in the Little Italy area. We shunned the huge queues at Pepe’s and instead spent our money at Sally’s, where we ate until we were bloated and uncomfortable. The pizza was perfect, certainly as good as any I’ve eaten in England. We retired early to the truck, enjoying the comfort of having somewhere friendly and secure to park the truck, after having attracted so much police attention when we had parked on the street in this corner of America.

In the morning we drove with Doug to meet his family and grab some breakfast; Naomi and I having spent the night sleeping, and Doug having spent the night awake and on duty. After a great breakfast at a local café, we said our farewells, and once again we left having received more hospitality and kindness than we would ever be likely to receive in a similar situation in Europe; hoping to one day be able to return the benevolence. We drove back into New Haven, and spent the day walking around the historic and charming Yale campus, and exploring the absurdly well-endowed, and also free, Yale Art Gallery. The quality of the art and artefacts on display in the gallery was astonishing, including everything from 3,000 year old Assyrian wall carvings, to abstract paintings, via antique furniture and Sumatran religious artefacts. In almost any other country in the world, the pieces would take pride of place in a national museum in the capital.

In the evening, we drove out to East Rock, a large park surrounding a red stone cliff that affords excellent views of over new Haven. We took a good walk around the park, and watched the sunset over the city and the Long Island Sound.

We spent the night adjacent to the park, and in the morning we continued our drive east and south along the coast, in the direction of New York City.