Thursday 16 June - beautiful sunny day for a cycle ride around Acadia National Park, which is handy as that's what we've booked... The coach roads around the park are wonderfully made and traffic free but quite hard work to cycle. Somehow we managed about 32 miles and at the moment can still (just) walk. Dinner in a 'fine dining' restaurant Maine style - a five sided glass fronted room high on a hillside overlooking Bar Harbor bay. Lazy man's lobster meant the...

The 94 mile journey I thought we were due turned out to be 225 miles, but hey ho we got to see Maine. Bar Harbor is delightful as is our new residence another very large Victorian house. Bikes are booked for a days cycling tomorrow. Ten years ago we celebrated one anniversary with a tandem around Rutland Water tomorrow our 25th will take us on car free carriage roads laid out by John Rockafellow a hundred or so years ago around Arcadia National Park. There is ...

Tuesday 14 June - drove across White Mountains to Haverhill, and back via Lincoln and Woodstock - not quite as far as visiting these places in England! Noticeable that the higher up the mountains the poorer the dwellings and presumably the harder the life/work. Many towns have no recognisable centre or downtown which is quite disconcerting to European raised visitors. Long roads of linear development, many with many grand houses (almost without exception clapperb...

So, moving on tomorrow from mountains to the sea. First impressions of America are, very friendly, polite people; beautiful and awesome scenery; great Tuckerman's pale ale; boring and complicated baseball; fast and furious ice hockey; very wide roads that makes it difficult to find your lane at junctions very confusing but after our second trip out Neil did compliment me on the fact that I had not tried to kill us that day! Odd language at times leaving out our n...

13 June - Avalanche Falls at the top of the Flume in Franconia Notch National Park is a spectacular 45 ft drop falling into a narrow gorge forced through the granite by volcanic and water erosion.