11th – 17th Sept: Days 156 – 162
To get to our next destination, Cape Cod, we had to navigate our way south to the other side of Boston. This was a bit of a white knuckle experience as we were relying on Google maps and that lady in the phone has NO idea of the most sensible route. Only the shortest or fastest. Anyway. The road surfaces were awful, the lanes were narrow, it was busy and we ended up going pretty much through the centre of Boston at high speed surrounded by crazy city drivers. There were some tense words spoken. Hunger didn’t help. I blame the lady in the phone.
So. Cape Cod. Heard of it but never quite sure where, or what, it was.
I now know that it is an easterly jutting peninsula off the lower coast of Massachusetts with an upturned hook at its eastern end and a knob pointing south on its lower westerly aspect. The islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are off the southern coast. It seems to me that it is quite likely a normal place for 9 months of the year, with an influx of summery holiday money madness for 3 months. Our roost for the next 6 nights was to be the interestingly named Sippewisset Campground, just outside the town of Falmouth. This is about halfway down that southwesterly knob. The campground was right on the most perfect of cycle trails. 11 miles of straight, flat, smooth black-topped rail trail. This led up to a great beach, 2.5 miles one way and down to Falmouth and Woods Hole, 2.5 and 5.5 miles respectively, the other way. We stocked up on provisions before we arrived and installed ourselves at our sweet little elevated site in the woods. An afternoon of not much rolled seamlessly into a nice evening around the campfire. That night the downside of camping under a large oak tree in autumn became noisily apparent at regular heart stopping intervals. Acorns+gravity=disturbed sleep.
Over the course of our 5 full days here we cycled about 55 miles up and down the cycle path.
Day 1: We went to Falmouth, booked haircuts, walked around in the heat, looked at some nice homes, went down to the marina, saw racks and racks of boats out on dry stacks, had a coffee, went to the library and printed out our remote voting papers for the NZ general election, came home, packed our towels and togs and cycled up to the beach. It was small but perfectly formed sheltered beach. We caught some rays, read our books, Nick had his first Atlantic swim, and a few hours later we came home for a campfire dinner.
Day 2: Cycled down to Woods Hole, home of the Woods Hole Oceangraphic Institute. It has been a lifelong ambition of Nick’s to visit this place after he read about it in a National Geographic magazine when he was a kid. There was a small aquarium, a museum and an exhibition centre for the tourists, but I am sure the actual institute is where all the impressive stuff happens. We were a bit underwhelmed but it was still a lovely place and we had a good day. Woods Hole is where the ferry for Martha’s Vineyard departs from, so we bought some tickets for the next day before heading back to Falmouth where we stopped in for an early dinner.
Day 3: Back on the bikes, we whizzed back down to Woods Hole to catch the 9.30 ferry to Martha’s. We opted not to take the bikes over as it is actually quite a big place, with an excellent and cheap network of bus routes around the island. We left Woods Hole in the fog but 45 minutes later we disembarked in the sunshine at the town of Oak Bluffs. Here there is a collection of ‘gingerbread cottages’, a collection of small ornate brightly painted wooden house all built in the late 1860s and 1870s. They are all very well preserved but form a bizarre little community with tourists like us snooping around. We forgot to take any photos, so more stock footage.
We wandered around and then hit the buses. Nick selected our spot for lunch, a fish market at the other end of the island. 1 hour and 3 buses later we arrived at Menemsha Harbor. This apparently was used as the location for the harbour scenes in the movie Jaws. It certainly looked familiar. We found the fish place and shared a crab cake, a bowl of lobster bisque and a lobster roll for lunch. We ate it perched on a small bench at the wharf in a foggy breezy atmospheric gloom. The wind blew some bisque off my spoon onto my clean trousers. I’m sure Roy Scheider didn’t have to put up with this sort of trial and tribulation whilst portraying Police Chief Brody. We explored the harbour and caught the 3 buses back to the ferry port. This was a great way to see the island. Away from the 4 main towns it is really quite rural. The permanent population is about 16000 but this swells to 100,000 in the summer. We were glad to see it a bit quieter, but again, were underwhelmed. Not sure what all the fuss is about really. This is not on our list of places to come back to. The trip home was sunny until just before we got back to Woods Hole, where we hit the fog bank again. Our plan to sit outside a bar and have a late afternoon beer suddenly didn’t seem so attractive, so we went home and lit the fire instead.
Day 4: We were back in Falmouth for 10am haircuts and afterwards did a few chores. We found an amazing french bakery, bought a big baguette and cycled home to make a ham and cheese sandwich. Felt like we had been transported back to La Belle France for a moment. The afternoon was a riot of laundry and laziness. At 6pm we pocketed a few beers and scooted back to the beach to watch sunset.
A bit of a treat to be able to catch a sunset on the east coast. After dinner we finally finished the last series of Breaking Bad. We are bereft. Walter and Jesse have been fairly constant companions on this trip. We will miss them.
Day 5: Another lovely warm sunny day, so after brunch we hit the beach again. These days will be few and far between from now on, so all bikini time is time well spent. The sea was amazingly warm, calm and clear. Very eerie to have no waves at all. That evening we headed back to town for dinner and sat out at a lovely Italian restaurant. I had the most spectacular shrimp pasta. Our ride home was the first trip up the cycle trail in the complete darkness. We had lights, but a few rabbits had close shaves. Idiots.
So that, in a nutshell, was our Cape Cod sojourn. Falmouth and surrounds was a jolly nice place, entirely enhanced by an amazingly utilitarian cycle trail. Next stop, The USA’s smallest state, Rhode Island.