After the fabulously sunny day yesterday, today is grey as we set out north on Highway 1, passing very familiar places in a very unfamiliar order – Essex, Ipswich, Newbury, Salisbury, Amesbury, Rye, Portsmouth, York! Along the way there was marshy sort of land on the coast side, small towns with clapperboard buildings in a range of Farrow & Ball colours and drizzle for much of the day. Despite this, we’ve noticed a few changing leaves along the way …
… and a change in the license plate logos from Spirit of America in Massachusetts to Live Free in New Hampshire and now Vacationland in Maine.
We took a detour on the coast road to the Nubble Lighthouse which was undergoing refurbishment, so was not looking its best.
This dramatic coastline has attracted artists who have congregated in several artists colonies in the early C20th, one being in Ogunqit and we stopped to look round their museum, but actually found the sculpture garden more appealing.
We drove a way on the I-95, then took another detour to Cape Elizabeth to see her lighthouse …
… and further round the headland to see Portland Head Lighthouse at the entrance to the harbour at Portland, the most impressive so far.
Portland is the largest city in Maine and we are staying at Inn on St John, which was built in 1897 to accommodate passengers arriving by railroad at Union Station. It is very Victorian and very quaint, with comfy beds and another great breakfast.
The morning dawned just as miserable, but dry at least, and we wandered into town, first through the Arts quarter, where we would have visited the Portland Art Museum but when we found the one Hopper was not on show we saved our money and spent it on a lovely piece of Campbell Pottery for our new kitchen instead.
We passed a Richardson Romanesque church …
… a mini flat iron …
… a very colourful lighthouse …
… evidence of another Freedom Trail …
… and a red Mini … sorry Longfellow’s House …
… together with one of his rhymes.
Time for another boat trip, this time to see some of Maine’s finest lighthouses, if we can find them through the mist and drizzle.
So there was Portland Harbour Breakwater Light, affectionately called Bug Light as it is cute as a bug …
… Spring Point Ledge Light …
… and a distant Portland Head Lighthouse we saw yesterday.
We took a bit of a turn round Casco Bay which has 137 islands although only a few are inhabited.
On the way we saw several coloured buoys. Maine is famed for its lobster as they come into the warm shallow water to shed their shells every year or two. Lobster fishermen are registered for up to 800 traps which they mark with personal coloured coded buoys. The traps have two parts and the ‘kitchen’ is baited with smelly herring and when the lobster moves into the ‘parlour’ it is trapped. The fishermen check and rebait their traps every few days but release any breeding females or males that are too large or small. A lobster is 5-7 years old before it is the legal minimum to harvest at about 1lb in weight. You only get around 20% meat from a cooked lobster so this gives 3oz meat, and a lobster roll with around 3oz lobster will be $10-20 depending where you eat, so still a treat even in lobster central.
There was also a tiny lighthouse in a garden, which is lit nightly by the owners, but hasn’t quite made it onto the lighthouse register.
So Pizza Villa opposite the inn is a local institution – one side is a pizza parlour with family friendly booths and the other is a bar with pints of local IPA, a nice little merlot, fab tunes and 5 screens showing football on a Monday and a ball game in a Tuesday … I know this because with the wet weather we ate there both nights and Chris was in Pizza heaven!
Tomorrow the forecast is better and we drive further north.
Off Travelling Together 