Day 32: Jamestown

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After a breakfast of leftover blueberry pie and homemmade ice cream (om nom nom) I gave the dog Polly a well-needed groom. She's a rough coated collie and has soooo much fur, which is started to get matted. Despite the air-con she spends all day panting, so I took pity and managed to remove an impressive amount of fluff. We then all piled in the car (Polly stayed in the house - she doesn't go outside in summer) with a picnic and headed along colonial parkway, which is a long road along the coat built by one of the New Deal alphabet agencies, the WPA, after the depression (this excited me greatly as we did it in GCSE History). We reached our destination of Jamestown(e) Island (they put 'e' on the end of everything to sound old/English) which is also close to where Pocohantas was from: cue more Disney excitement. Jamestown was the earliest permanent English settlement in the US, which gets them all very excited. We saw a reconstruction of a glass blowing shed and the hosts bought me a lovely handmade shot glass (cunningly disguised as a medicinal phial) since they were sympathetic of my love of gin. After a picnic on the beach we then caught the free ferry over to Surry and drove past Smith's Fort and a few rural farms, where we bough fresh veg for supper.

After a much needed afternoon nap we went over to have drinks with an English friend of theirs who lives nearby. Laurence is a 54yo cockney who worked as a firefighter in London for 20 years before his bad back forced him to take early retirement. He then decided to do a degree in marine biology at Newcastle and came over to William and Mary Univeristy for his PhD, which is why he's still here (now applying for post-doc funding). He was enormous fun. He lives in an old slave cottage on a plantation which is owned by a lawyer who made a fortune suing mesothelioma cases (mostly with workers in the shipyards in Norfolk). While we were there the landlord came over to announce that he had just got engaged... to his fourth wife and third secretary!

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Photos

The James River
We saw a bald-headed eagle just by here

The ferry over to Surrey
The ferry stop was called Surrey station, which reminded me of the Boat Race...

Remains of the original Jamestown church tower
This is the oldest English construction in the USA

Wilson creek
This was next to Coleraine Plantation, where Laurence lives in one of the old slave houses