Thursday 6 October 2016
We recommence the organised tour with a coach to the Falmouth terminus of the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. This is an island famous for its residents who can achieve a certain amount of privacy on the island – such include Carly Simon, Maria Muldaur, Judy Blume and historically Jackie Onassis, James Cagney and Patricia Neal lived here, whilst many more film stars, politicians and other well known people visit for holidays.
The island also has the notoriety of the location for the filming of “Jaws” and the sad death of Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969 at Chappaquiddick; later in 1999 John F Kennedy Jr and his wife and her sister died in a plane crash just off the coast.
We are met by a “school bus” type coach and are driven around the outskirts of the island. The driver is also our guide and she manages to drive and talk more or less without pause as the tour progresses. She named many more celebrities.
Our trip reaches Edgartown which is the largest town on the island for a lunch time break and we wander around the pretty town in some pretty hot sunshine reaching the waterside. The pubs close to the water are all busy so we wander back towards town and find somewhere to sit in a bit of shade but outdoors as the weather is so nice.
Photos of the trip to Martha’s Vineyard are here.
After lunch we rejoin the bus and wandering off her normal route our driver takes us to a point from where we can see the Chappaquiddick bridge in the far distance. Our journey then resumes back to Oak Bluffs where we also have a chance to see the local houses before catching the return ferry.
In the evening we take the bus to Woods Hole which is at the end of the mainland. I had hoped for a nice little harbour with some bibbly bobbly boats and so on. Instead there is a nasty stench of diesel hanging around. We end up in the Landfall restaurant which delivers a good meal in a nice environment. I choose the local delicacy of stuffed Quahog but unusually I am not particularly taken by this particular clam.
Picture by Jackie Whitbread
We take the bus for the return journey and sort of parallel to the road is the Shining Sea Bikeway which is a conversion of the former railway line (there was evidence of an old railway bridge at Woods Hole) built by the Old Colony Railroad into a cycle route. At Falmouth the bus actually wanders into and out of the old station area.
Time to move on.