A spot of moisture in the Marblehead air

Weather Warnings

I don't think Drew and I can have a holiday without a weather warning somewhere along the way. We have had hurricanes at force 4 (New York) and 5 (Havana). We have got stuck in Spain due to an ash cloud and last year we faced a Tropical Storm in Florida. Well at 11.23 my mobile phone got exited and gave an emergency warning. When I got back into a wifi zone I found it was this.

Flash Flood Warning including Marblehead - US National Weather Service

Marblehead is in Essex County, and it did rain torrentially for about two hours, meaning both Fire Engines (cunningly named Engine 1 and 2) were out and about dealing with flooded areas.

But that is later in the day, a bit of the earlier events first.

Breakfast

Regular followers of my holiday blog will now that I find jet lag harded when flying West than I do East. So today I was awake and ready for the day ahead at 3.30am. I woke at 3.00am and tried to get back to sleep, but I could recognise there was no chance, so I got up four hours after getting to bed and to sleep. I used the time by writing the blog post about yesterday evening and began to load the pictures from last night. 

Drew woke soon after 5.00am, so I made coffee for us in the machine provided. I had a shower at 6.30am - a very nice shower it was too and completed my ablutions. Drew went next meaning we were both ready to go down to breakfast as it began at 7.30am. Breakfast here at the Harbor Inn runs from 7.30am to 9.30am and includes cereal, fruits, juices, tea and coffee, cold meats and a cooked option which changes daily.

I began with a wholemeal (or wholewheat as they call it here) bagel with cream cheese. Drew opted for some banana bread which was soft and juicy, but did lead later in the morning to occasional bursts of Yes we have no bananas! 

Breakfast - First Course

The cooked offering was a very nice sausage, red pepper and mozzarella frittata. 

Frittata - Course two 

With plenty of juice and coffee to keep the fluids up, we were very pleased with our meal. 

Walking from Marblehead to Marblehead Neck

Why Marblehead

One of my Facebook friends asked me why we had opted for Marblehead at the begining of a holiday which is mainly in Canada. Well there are two sensible reasons and two ridiculus ones. Naturally it was the ridiculus ones which were the main reason.

The first sensible reason was a desire to fly with Virgin Atlantic, to have the comfort of Premium Economy. This paid off, with even more comfort than expected in Upper Class. While Virgin code share with Delta to a number of Canadian cities, they don't fly there direct.

The second sensible reason is that I don't like driving in the first day or two of a holiday in North America because I like my brain to settle to the new time zone before concentrating on driving. Having decided to fly with Virgin to Boston Marblehead seem a close enough place to base oursleves until we pick up the car, in the nearby town of Salem (yes that one) on Monday.

The first silly reason has to do with books. In particular the Jesse Stone books of Robert B. Parker. We first came across the character called Jesse Stone when Drew spotted a Channel Five, made for TV movie, called Stone Cold starring Tom Selleck. Drew is a big fan of Selleck, and yes we own and have watched on DVD all 158 episodes of Magnum PI. 

We watched the Stone Cold movie and became enamoured by the gentle pace and personal insight of the conflicted cop called Jesse Stone. People who know me will know that I am a bibliophile and believe that books produce much better pictures than TV ever manages, so for the following Christmas, and for most Christmas' since I have had the latest Jesse Stone book bought for me. We now have all 16 of the books (the 17th is in hardback and we will get it once a Kindle version appears). As I expected the books are even richer in characterisation and context than the movies. In particular they set the events of the stories in a town called Paradise, North of Boston, where Stone is the Chief of Police. A little bit of diffing, and some check of geography and it turns out that Paradise is based on Marblehead. So, as we did in 2002 in Santa Barbara when tracking down the fictional town of Santa Teresa from the alphabet books of Sue Grafton, you can navigate the town from the books descriptions, we came to see if Marblehead, Jesse's Paradise, is like the books describe.

The second silly reason has to do with BBC Radio Five Live, especially its overnight broadcasts called Up All Night. Three nights a week this is presented by Rhod Sharpe from the upstairs room of his home which is a studio here in Marblehead. During my working life I would listen to Rhod, and his fascinating interviews, most nights, thankfully since retirment I sleep better and hear a little less of him, but it is still a pleasure if I have a sleepless night to catch-up with him. I think I might have tweeted Rhod about coming to Marblehead, but Drew wouldn't have it, saying I would be like a stalker. So I'm here to experience Rhod's beloved town, but not to meet him.

The walk to Styles Island  

One of the places in Paradise in the Jesse Stone books is an island just across the sheltered Paradise bay from Paradise called Styles Island. It is accessible by boat or by a causeway. In the real life Marblehead the island is called Marblehead Neck but the causeway is there just as described. 

So we left the hotel at 8.30am and took a gentle stroll, with plenty of photos, through the old town area of Marblehead. The town is full of signs of its earliest inhabitants. Marblehead has been here since 1629, a very early date for European immigrants to the North American continent. The Pilgrims, the first European settlers, only immigrating on the Mayflower in 1620.

One of the earliest buildings

The full range of the photos of this fascinating area are on my Flickr.

Our walk continued down to the harbour area in Marblehead.  I could stand for hours watching the amazing site of so many small boats bobbing up and down in the safe enclosed harbour space between the town and the Marblehead Neck.   

Marblehead Bay

Our walk took us over the Causeway between Marblehead and Marblehead Neck and it was exactly as the two of us remembered/pictured it, from the books when the causeway had been closed by Jesse to keep criminals either on or off the island.

So we were on to Marblehead Neck, known to us as Styles Island, and it was amazing to see the houses, tennis courts and yacht club looking just like the descriptions so carefully crafted in the books. Every corner we turned Drew or I would say - "ooh look, there is where ... (fill in a link to one of the stories at this point) happened." 

Perhaps the one that got us most excited was the Eastern Yacht club which looked exactly like the 'Grey Gull' beloved by Jesse for meeting people and having a drink or, less often food. It was as if we had jumped into the books like Mary and Bert jump into the street art in Mary Poppins.

We walked to the end of the island to Marblehead Lighthouse arriving at 10.30am. the lighthouse looks more like an oil derrick than my conception of a lighthouse, but it is in a very pleasant park named after Chandler Hovey who donated the land to the town. The park and or the lighthouse had drawn lots of people simply to sit and stare out at the sea. So we joined them for a little while.

Castle Rock

Having come onto the island and walked along the western most road, we decided to walk back along the eastern side, the Atlantic side, of the island. This took us to a point called Castle Rock Park which had a bus load of tourists visiting. 

Disappointingly it turns out that the park is not named for any famous Castle, or because it looks like a castle. No it is named Castle Rock, because of the faux French Castle built on this part of the island.

France come to Marblehead - Turrets and all

From there we walked back to the Causeway and as the rain began to fall, and the Fire Engines began to rush on to the Causeway and the Neck to relieve the flooded areas, we went back to the hotel. 

Our full route looked like this:

Saturday's walk - courtesy of Google My Maps

Point F also being point A where we started. Google says this walk is 7.2 miles, which seemed about right. It was good walking after a day of sitting on a plane yesterday. It was indeed a lovely walk, and fulfilled one of our ambitions, the trip to 'Styles Island'. Though the last 2 miles of the walk seemed longer that the first five, due to our clothes getting heavier with the rain.

We arrived back at the hotel at the stroke of Midday (3.5 hours after we left). We dried ourselves and got changed, before heading out to lunch at 1.15pm.

Lunch

We had passed earlier a Muffin Shop called The Muffin Shop as a donut shop features heavily in the Jesse Stone books (called Daisy's) we decided to use this as its equivalent. 

The Muffin Shop, with no Muffins

I opted for a Turkey Reuben sandwich - on wheat bread. My Sandwhich was easy to order, the only question was the choice of breads.

While Drew had an ham and cheese sandwich with lettuce, tomato and mayo on white. Ham and cheese seemed a simply sandwich, but Drew had to answer another few questions: a) Do you want lettuce? - Yes; b) do you want tomato? - Yes; c) Do you want condiments? - Which do you have? - a list ensures - I'll have mayo; d) What bread do you want.

Amusingly for a shop with its title - The Muffin Shop - it had no Muffins, they are so good they had all sold out. 

After lunch we got back to the hotel at 2.15, Drew went downstairs to the lounge to read and I spent some time uploading and naming our 184 photos onto Flickr. I hope you enjoy them!