Way back 1983, in my long ago youth, I (Peter Williams, #TeamUK ) set out upon a series of adventures, one of which was backpacking the east coast of the USA and eastern Canada, largely travelling by Greyhound bus. On the journey I met many amazing people and saw and did many amazing things! Massachusetts was one of them! I spent a Summer in Cape Cod, based in Sandwich, Ma
Sandwich is Cape Cod’s oldest town. Its New England style White Church was founded in 1638 and has some of the Mayflower’s Pilgrim Fathers in its registers. They arrived here by sea in the early 1600s
The church is world famous as it was used as the cover picture of Elvis Presley’s “How Great Thou Art” religious album (1967)
Sandwich is the birth place of Thornton Burgess, the world famous children’s author, whose stories were based on animal characters with human characteristics and set around The Smiling Pool, and The Old Briar Patch. His work has been translated into almost every major language.
Further up the coast is Plymouth Rock, the place where the Pilgrim Fathers (who’d embarked on a voyage from England in 1620 to escape religious persecution and exercise freedom of thought and faith) first set foot, changing the shape of America and setting it on course to be the country it is today.
Further up the coast still, Massachusetts’ biggest and most famous city is, of course, Boston. Home of the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when objectors to British tea taxes threw entire cargoes of tea into the harbour. I commemorated the event by throwing my own tea bag into the same harbour almost 210 years later. There was an excellent museum and discovery experience in the same harbour.
Boston is also famed for The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, in which Revere rode through the night (in April 1775) to set up a warning lantern to inform the patriots that the British were about to attack by sea. The ride is remembered in a partly fictional poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1860.
Constructed in 1723, The Old North Church in Boston is now a national memorial. Built after the style of Sir Christopher Wren, the English architect responsible for designing much of the rebuilt London after its Great Fire in 1666, including the famous St Paul’s Cathedral. It is from the tower of this church that Revere hung his signal lanterns at the end of his ride.
Off the south coast of Cape Cod, there is a group of islands including Martha’s Vineyard and the traditional home of The Kennedy Family. Hyannis, Cape Cod’s largest town, has the John Fitzgerald Kennedy (assassinated 1963) memorial wall. Around the pool alongside the memorial wall, is an inscription from one of JFK’s speeches: I believe it is important that this country sail and not lie still in the harbor.
Cape Cod’s extreme tip has Provincetown, another important landing place for the original Pilgrims, and throughout its history, an important fishing and whaling town (now a centre for whale-watching) and when I visited in 1983 was just emerging as a resort for what we now know as the LGBTQ+ community.
And finally, in the same area, is the Marconi Beach area, Guglielmo Marconi made history by proving that radio signals could be transmitted around the curve of the Earth against the predictions of other scientists of the era. From this point in 1903 he linked President Theodore Roosevelt and Edward VII of England in Cornwall, and enabled them to send messages to one another across around 2000 miles.
Peter Williams #TeamUK
The photos are all my original, but scans or copies of old fashioned printed photos!
I’m only (semi) kidding. Kinda. Maybe. Nonetheless, it’s such a great read and when I think back to my own visits to Boston and Cape Code, I am frankly astounded (but not surprised) that I don’t recall any of the historical information that Peter has provided. I remember taking lots of photos and eating lobster but that’s about it. 
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