After leaving Boston we headed down to Plymouth, Massachusetts. Plymouth is home to the Pilgrims who departed England on the Mayflower on 6th September 1620. The original intention was to arrive further south however storms pushed them north to Cape Code. They founded the first permanent European settlement in New England. The first winter was harsh and the settlers’ survival was largely due to the assistance of the local Wampanoag people.
We visited the Plimoth and Patuxet museums. The Patuxet Homesite is located on the Eel River and was home to the Native peoples who lived there for over 12,000 years. They have a Wetu (house) which is where the Wampanoag communities lived. A big fire was lit in the middle of the room, which was a bit smoky, but kept them warm (although it was pretty warm outside whilst we were there). The seats were all lined with animal furs. The cooking area was outside of the Wetu.
We next visited the Plimoth site which was a 17th Century recreated English Village. There were timber framed houses with people who were dressed as you would have in the 17th century and they talked to you as though you were really in that century which was a little odd! There was a woman cooking dinner, a guy building a house. They also had animals including goats and pigs and they were also growing crops. The woman asked us how we had arrived and she was a bit surprised when we said by boat, after all she thought she was in the 17th century, not your normal mode of travel.
In the autumn of 1621, the colonists marked their first harvest with a three-day celebration. The Wampanoag people joined the English for feasting and entertainment. In the 1800s this celebration became the basis for the story of the First Thanksgiving.
Our next port of call was Martha’s Vineyard which is an island seven miles of the coast. You can only get there by air or boat. In the town of Oaks Bluff (what a great name) there are the “Gingerbread Cottages”. They were built in the second half of the 1800’s. They are informally known as The Campground and officially as the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association which is a religious non profit organisation. We had a chat with a couple sitting on their veranda who said that most of the cottages were now used as holiday homes or lets.
The Tabernacle sits in the middle of the cottages and is the largest covered outdoor performance space on the island. It was built in 1879 and is an impressive structure
After a few days here we headed back to the mainland to New Bedford which is found behind The New Bedford Hurricane Protection Barrier which lies across New Bedford and Fairhaven Harbor. The project protects about 1,400 acres in New Bedford, Fairhaven, and Acushnet from tidal flooding associated with hurricanes and coastal storms. The barrier extending across the harbor consists of a 4,500-foot-long earthfill dike with stone slope protection. The barrier has a maximum elevation of 20 feet and a 150-foot-wide gated opening to accommodate commercial and recreational navigation.
In the 19th century New Bedford was the busiest whaling port in the world and the richest city per capita in the USA. It was also known as the “city that lit the world” as the whale oil was used to create clean-burning, bright, and long-lasting lamp oil.
This part of the USA is well known for its lobsters, so when we saw one so large on the top of a restaurant we had to go and visit and the lobster was very nice too. Walking along the street we saw a 20 ft rooster made of stuff that had been thrown away as rubbish (or should I say trash).
We next visited Newport, Rhode Island which is where the Americas Cup was held for 53 years from 1930 – 1983. Newport is well known as a hub for numerous sailing events and luxurious yachts. Now when you arrive at places with big nautical links it’s not always so easy to get a place to moor your boat, by which I mean, there are often only expensive marinas or expensive mooring balls. We were impressed that there was something for everyone, even quite a reasonably sized anchorage, which we used. Plenty of places to take your dinghy ashore too, which can be a challenge at times. They have a sailing museum here which we obviously had to visit.
The other main attractions here are the Newport Mansions which were built during the Gilded Age from 1870-1910. With the expansion of industry and transportation and the lack of income tax (well there’s a thing) it created a new wealthy class of people including the Vanderbilts, Morgan, Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller. They spent their wealth on lavish lifestyles trying to out do each other! Definitely a case of trying to keep up with the Joneses or should I say the Vanderbilts! We visited Breaker House which was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, one of the richest men in America, from 1893 – 1895. It was very opulent.
There is a drama called “The Gilded Age” and some of it is filmed at Breaker House. There is a whole room just for the crockery and cutlery.
We also had a lovely walk, scramble in some parts, along the Cliff Path, which ran along some of the gardens of the Manion houses.
September 2025