Day 9 - Barnard, VT to Boston

Distance travelled today: 155 miles by road

We had a great night and had plenty of rest. The kingside bed at the Inn was very comfortable and the sheets very soft! There was slightly more noise from the other guests last night, the Inn does have quite thin walls, and some of the guests had quite loud voices too!

We planned to leave at 11am when the checkout was, so we went down for lunch at 8:30am, and then git ready afterwards.

Breakfast; chocolate muffin (top left), banana and lemon syrup (top right) and egg puff with chicken sausage and scone (below)

Today Nancy said we were starting with desert which was a freshly baked chocolate muffin. Then for the fruit course we had sliced banana with a lemon syrup. And finally we had an egg puff, chicken sausage and plain scone.

We set off pretty much dead on eleven. Nancy and Mike gave as a fond a farewell as we chatted to them for about 20 minutes before we left. We purchased a couple of keepsakes and also asked for her scone recipe so I can try it when we get home. The weather was a bit warmer, although we still found our bottle of water and cup of coffee that was left in the car had totally frozen! We drove down the road to Barnard just to see what was there. Nancy had mentioned to us that we could walk there, but it was so cold that we just went straight back after our walk yesterday. We picked up a couple of postcards, but there wasn't really much there except for a frozen lake!

Pictures from Barnard. Bridge (top left), high street (top right) and general store (bottom)

I had been stressing about what petrol to put in the car. I forgot to ask when we picked up the car, and there was no sticker on the tank to indicate what to put in like you would usually get. I had rung the rental company to check, and also the driver’s manual, but I just wanted to be 100% sure.

So we pulled up to the first gas station we saw. This was a bit of a learning experience, apparently you can’t fill up then pay at the booth, you need to prepay, which involved a comical scene with the attendant as he was explaining this to me and asking how much I wanted, and I was saying how I had no idea how much I neede to prepay. Anyway, it turns out you can get refunded after filling up. I suppose it’s to stop people stealing petrol. So I pre-paid $30, but in the end the car only took $21 worth of fuel.

Amazingly, when I started the car, a warning light came on, although I only noticed once I pulled away. We stopped immediately and consulted the handbook. It turned out it was the tyre low pressure light. We inspected the tyres thoroughly and couldn’t see anything wrong. We stopped at the next garage, there was air, but not a pressure metre. We decided to keep going, based on the fact the temperature was so last night that might affect to reading.

Low pressure warning light

Mike had suggested we checked out a local glass blowing factory, which was on the way back so we decided to find to break the journey up. We had a little difficulty finding it, but were glad we took the extra time to find it as it was really fascinating.

There was a river which had cut a gorge out of the valley that we drove down, and this factory was located on the river, at a waterfall. We parked up and headed in (still nervous about whether we would return to flat tyres!). The shop was amazing with loads of fantastic glasswear, I wish we could have bought loads of it, but 1) it was expensive and 2) there was no way we’d ever get any of it home.

Selection of Christmas ornaments on offer

So we had a little browse, and then went downstairs to the factory section. There was a furnace down there so it was nice and warm. There were two guys there making a wine glass. Unfortunately it was more moulding than blowing but still interesting to watch.

Glass blowing furnace (top left), balcony (top right) and bridge over gorge (below)

We then went out a side door and were amazed to find a viewing platform for quite a large waterfall at the back of the building. It was as impressive as you can imagine, but the extra factor was that half of the waterfall was frozen, including some of the river, which created this really unique effect.

Partly frozen waterfall (top), moulds (middle left), hydro-electric terminal (middle right) and frozen river (below)

We stood and watched it for a while, before deciding it was time to head back on the road. We got back to the car, still with 4 fully inflated tyres so set about going home. It was only going to take about 2 hours to get back, with the soundtrack of Utopia FM of course.

The journey was pretty quiet again, although once we got to Manchester and then Boston, the traffic was pretty heavy. We negotiated it with no problem this time though. We had to stop to check the tyres again, this time we went to a Liqour and Wine outlet which was entertaining to see the cheap the booze was!

Vodka at $26 dollars for 1.75 litres!

We got back to Jo and Mike’s pretty much bang on 4pm as planned. We had asked Jo if she would kindy let us have dinner with them, so we spent a bit of tie watching Mike, Sophia and Dylan putting this complicated Lego robot together. We chatted to Jo whilst she made us dinner. They were very friendly and made us feel very welcome.

After dinner, the kids went to bed and we stayed up for a bit catching up before going to bed ourselves.