Day 57-60, Sept 18-21. Fairhaven, MA to Newport, RI

There is a blogger on the DALMAC blog that has as his tag line, "The wind; a hill you cannot see." Oh my, yes. We only had a 32 mile ride today, so we were a little lazy, and got a late start. We didn't look at the weather forecast. If we had, we would have seen a prediction for winds out of the southwest at 20 mph with gusts to 30. To add spice to our life, we had two flats, and a climb that topped out at 9.4% This was a long day. We were going south and west.

The route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/16741371

The bridge across the Acushnet river which divides New Bedford From Fairhaven was almost closed when we came up to it.


Fairhaven is an interesting city. FYI, all Titlist golf balls for the Americas and Europe are made here. This is also the port that Joshua Slocum sailed out of on his sailboat, "Spray" to begin his never before done, solo circumnavigation of the globe.

Leaving town, we encountered our first hill. More of these to come.


Today's lessons learned: 1) Schwalbe Duranos are not a good tire for a loaded touring tandem. We will be going back to Schwalbe Marathons in October. The Durano lasts less than 1,000 miles, the Marathon over 3,500. 2) It's not just the total amount you climb, 1,650 feet today, but the number of miles you have to climb it. Today felt like climb after climb even though the altitude gain was not all that much.

Interesting stuff along the way. This was just before our second flat.


I really do love Newport. I was stationed here when I was in the Navy, and I also attended several Newport Folk Festivals in the 60's and 70's. Have also been a tourist. Margaret has been very understanding of my nostalgia trip here. We went to the Black Pearl bar that I frequented when in the Navy, but now it is much more up-scale, and we ended up not eating there. I did get to have more Little Neck clams, and finally today some Cherry Stones. All raw. My memory told me to get Cherry Stones, but I found I liked the smaller Little Necks better.

Our first rest day here it rained all day so instead of seeing the town, we took care of bike maintenance and such. The next day we took in the sights, but could not get to all I wanted to see. Margaret suggested we stay an extra day so we could finish my list of must sees.

We visited two mansions of the many available to tour in Newport, the Breakers, and Marble House. Rather than inflict amateur photos on you, I will direct you to the website. http://www.newportmansions.org/explore The Breakers is the largest at a little over 138,000 square feet. The Marble House cost the most to build, constructed between 1888 and 1892, it cost about $11,000,000, or roughly $290,000,000 in today's money. Remember that the Vanderbilts only stayed in their Newport "cottage" for six weeks out of the year. They had five or six other opulent houses spotted about the world.

We also walked the Cliff Walk. http://www.cliffwalk.com/ 

It starts out rather gently and paved.  

 But it eventually becomes rather rough.

They do provide helpful signs.

 Tomorrow we ride to Coventry, RI and our last night in the state. It will also be the first day of fall, and we need to get ourselves further south.