Friday, 21 November 2014

Day 8 - Barnard, VT

Distance travelled today: 22 miles

After all the travelling from yesterday, today was a really good day as we were just able to relax, not worry about anything and just enjoy our surroundings.

Wintery view from our window in the morning. Looking over the front of the Inn

The best thing about the Inn as that breakfast is included and it's not just any breakfast, Nancy provides a special three course home cooked breakfast. It starts at 8:30am which is a nice time, not too early.We came down and got a nice seat by the window. By now the weather had clouded over and it was still very cold, so it had actually begun to snow very gently, Kathryn calls it Movie-snow.

Breakfast room

Mike bought us coffee to start with and the first course was a cinnamon spice scone. We had warmed maple leaf syrup to go with it and it was just so delicious. The second course was a fruit course with pineapple and raspberry (no photo!) and finally we had some polish pancakes with blueberries filling, and maple cured bacon. This was a great start to the day.


3 course breakfast. Cinnamon scone (top left), mug of coffee (top right) and polish pancakes (below)

We got ready, and decided to go down and explore the local town of Woodstock, that we had briefly driven through on our way to Barnard. The roads were very quiet, and we found the town green that had lots of parking around it that didn't require any parallel parking! There was a coin operated metre for the parking which I hadn't seen before.

Parking meter 


Town green in Woostock

We walked around the green and down the high street to find somewhere to go for lunch. We popped into the post office to get some stamps, and went into a bar/café on the corner. It was still really cold, but the sun was briefly coming out. We had chilli and nachos which was delicious, with melted cheese on top. This was perfect to warm us up.

View from bridge over river in middle of Woodstock 

Post office (left) and High Street (right) in Woodstock

Bentley's Restaurant exterior (left) and delicious, warming Chilli (right)

Once we were finished, we headed across the road to a general store that had loads of interesting things. It was 120 years old apparently, it had loads of different sections with everything you could imagine. We bought a few souvenirs as gifts to bring back. I'm not sure why I didn't take a photos. There was a noticeboard just alongside it.

Noticeboard with time on left dial and temperature on right dial

By the time we got back to the car, the meter had just about expired. We drove to a nearby Farmers' Market and had another browse, but didn’t buy anything this time. We got back to the Inn about 2pm. I had asked Nancy in the morning about whether there were any trails we could walk. As they had their own dog, called Beckett, Nancy said she’d be walking her this afternoon and we could join her.

View of front of the Inn

It was really cold, but once we were walking it wasn’t too bad, just my toes that I couldn’t feel! There are snowmobile trails all around the area that cross into nearby states and so we walked along one into the woods. Nancy said they are groomed in winter, but without the snow, it was quite difficult to see where they were so it was good to have a guide. Nancy told us about themselves and how to came to run the inn. It was a lovely walk as the sun was out now, and Beckett was running around having a great time. She was really careful that me and Kathryn didn’t stray too far from the pack. Unfortunately due to the amount of trees there wasn’t really much of a view for us to look at, even though we walked to the local high point. We just turned around and came straight back.

View of snowmobile trial we were walking along, Beckett and Nancy can be seen on the right!

View of woods

When we got back we had a hot drink to warm ourselves up. We had a couple hours to wait before our reservation and the restaurant so we just relaxed in our room. We went to eat at 5pm, this time we both had the burger which I have to admit may have been the best burger I’ve ever eaten. We had this lovely woman serving us this time that was really interesting to hear about where we came from and our journey.

Front of Barnard Inn/Max's Tavern (Above). Specials board (lower left) and delicious hamburger (lower right)


It was now really cold, and the car park outside the Tavern was totally frozen over, but amazingly the car was still ok to drive. I took a quick photo as we left, but you really didn't want to stay outside for too long. When we got back, we did pretty much the same thing as the previous evening. Kathryn found this programme called Tanked on Animal Planet, which is a bit like pimp my ride but with fish tanks that was really interesting to watch.

No comments:

Post a Comment