The racoons and snakes of Weymouth

I am here in the New England at a great time of year, taking advantage of a generous airline offer that got me here for well under 300 pounds.

There’s so much going on. The weather is a comfortable and sunny 60 degrees just right for sightseeing. The famous fall is well underway and tickertape parades of red and gold leaves accompany me everywhere. The colour of the leaves, as they turn before ‘falling’ on the trees in New England is stunning. Massachusetts is still largely covered with trees and the cute clapboard houses complete with rocking chairs in place on wide porches, sit within their own little piece of woodland. It is very pretty.

But there is far more than just leaves to see in the New World. I start in Lexington, a small town just out of Boston. It is known proudly as the birthplace of the American Revolution, I visit the Tavern on the green in the centre where it all started. It is a picture perfect open grassy space with a white steepled church, and beflagged pole.

There is a statue to Paul Revere, the man who raced ahead and blew the whistle on the British army’s secret operation to sneak up and pinch the peasants’ weapons in the hope that they would give up their troublemaking and pay up their taxes.

My tour guide is dressed as a colonial New Englander and is at pains to point out not just the role of the men but also the women in what was effectively a civil war waged far from the homeland.

These adventurous women were ‘politically aware’ they stopped using tea and switched to coffee, long before the Boston tea party They also banned English linen and span their own cloth. Both of these changes forming important cultural distance between the old and New World that still separate us today.

As I step inside the tavern I feel instantly at home. It is so English and just like so many cosy ‘taverns’ of Dorset, with inglenook fireplace, bare floorboards and rustic chunky beams. Our country’s place in this nation’s history becomes much more real to me.

I want to visit my local, far from home, towns. At the airport I tell the immigration officer where I am from and his eyes widen in surprise.

I am advised strongly against visiting Dorchester. I have seen Ben Affleck’s recent film, set in Dorchester so I understand why. Instead I go to Weymouth there is a wildlife centre that is opening it’s new $8 million dollar building to the public for a fundraiser. I guess after that bill they need to refresh their bank balance. I am given a tour of the tarantula and tortoises. I hear how rabies is still pretty rife and how possums the only mammal native to America really do freeze with fear There is hotdogs, candyfloss and a strong community feel. As evening falls they have an open mike session inside as local guys play their guitars and sing Bob Dylan songs. A fire is lit outside and sticks with marshmallows on are handed round for children to toast. Hallowe’en is just around the corner and in the woods surrounding the centre they have laid out 1000 scary faced carved pumpkin lanterns along a trail. It takes about 20 minutes to walk the candlelit path and it is a little bit spooky but mostly magical.

As Halloween fever continues to gather I visit a local primary school for their evening of ‘haunted happenings’ the emphasis is on dressing up and having fun rather than anything spooky or supernatural. I see the cutest mad professors, pirates, witches and a toilet! I am unable to deny my competitive streak as I find myself queuing again and again in order to redeem my previously pathetic attempts at pin the tail on the donkey.

Several hours of Bobbing for apples, hoopla and musical chairs are accompanied by delirious giggling and laughter fuelled by the kids’ excitement of being at school in the dark and in fancy dress. It is all topped off off with pizza and a goody bag to go home with.

I up the spooky ante considerably with a trip to Salem. This little town of 40,000 is the epicentre of Haunted happenings in New England. In 1692 three little girls managed to convince town leaders the devil was running riot in Salem and that many of their neighbours were involved in witchcraft. Religious hysteria reached a criminally dangerous level and 20 people were killed on ‘spectral evidence’.

Today a lot of witches live in Salem without fear of persecution and have shops from which they make a very good living. I pay $30 for a 20 minute reading from a psychic, who is a very nice and kind lady who proceeds to tell me all sorts of stuff that is completely wrong about my life.

Like, I have two children, when I have four, that I like to relax walking along ‘the ocean’ when I’m an indoors girl, and that I have a special small dog, when I have a cat. It’s funny though cos after coming away thinking it was rubbish I am now thinking twice about it and fitting in what she said.

Such as, my two oldest children are now adults, leaving two technical ‘children. I did walk a bit of the coastal path at Worth Matravers recently and my cat thinks he’s a dog and as for him being special, well his name is Precious. Salem’s power to bewitch may still be strong.

My tour guide is Joel. A part time university professor who lectures in economics. He runs the Boston marathon each year and was born, raised and still lives in Salem. He has a pedal powered cab. I sit in the back and he pedals an arrangement that suits me just fine.

He tells me how no historical artefacts from the Salem witch trial remains. It was all quite deliberately swept under the carpet and he says it was only when ‘the city of Salem said hey we can make some money out of this’ that the witch trials history was revived. A simple but profound memorial of a stone walled garden with benches for each of the people who died without a grave has now been built to remember the victims.

Joel believes ‘there is a lot more to Salem than just witches’ and he demonstrates this with a comprehensive tour of the unspoilt waterfront, then pedalling me down genteel avenues of historical society protected 18th century clapboard and brick built houses.

This includes a former meeting house currently being renovated where he used to go to scouts.

Along the river where huge ships used to draw up bringing wealth and trade into Salem is a 200-year-old red brick church. Plans have been drawn up to build a new courthouse on the site. So the church is being moved. Steel girders are clamped to its side and a complex structure of support has been rigged up to support it from the inside.

Seems like the Old World is still being pushed aside when gets in the way of the new.