Saturday on the Cape with the "Codders"

The first chore of the day was to collect our clean clothes from the laundromat. In need of a spot of relaxation  after that, we drove to Hyannis where we boarded the Cape Cod Central Railroad train for a scenic two hour trip to Cape Cod Canal which is seven miles long, separating Cape Cod from mainland Massachusetts and was dug out of glacial rock.

We rode alongside cranberry bogs for a significant part of the journey and discovered that the word cranberry is a derivation of craneberry, so called because the flower resembles a crane.

The cranberry is an important agricultural crop in Cape Cod and it grows in sand which is irrigated by stretches of water known as kettle holes.

 The land is very marshy

 and in days gone by, when cows grazed the marshland, stone cow tunnels where built under the railway tracks that were 'one cow high by one cow wide'. In the course of our journey we saw many interesting birds such as osprey, bittern, blue herons and cormorants.but we didn't manage to photograph any as the 'engineer' had given all passengers strict instructions to keeps heads, arms and hands inside the carriage at all times! We reached Cape Cod Canal, the widest man-made canal in the world, just as a huge barge was sailing by.

 Jim's dream Dutch barge fades into insignificance by comparison! Because of tides between Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay, the canal is like a river which changes direction four times a day with the tide and today it was pretty fast flowing. All in all it was quite an amazing feat of man-made engineering.

In the afternoon we decided to go to Chatham fish port to watch the boats coming in with the day's catch. We saw hundreds of dog fish being unloaded, followed by cod and then lobsters.

 Whilst this was going on, there were gulls and cormorants wheeling around and waiting for an odd morsel to escape the fishermen's'eye, but most entertaining were the seals who appeared to be putting on a show for the tourists' entertainment.

Group of seals on a sand bank

(Click on photos to enlarge)

After all this fun, we decided to sample some of the catch at the nearby Chatham Pier fish market and so we tucked into a shared lobster roll and French fries which turned out to be very, very tasty. We needed to burn off a few calories after the fishy feast, so we took the town tree trail that we missed out on last night.
Chatham has some notable trees, such as American Linden, Silver Maple, Northern Catalpa and  Chinese Elm (which is much more resistant to Dutch elm disease and the elm leaf beetle than European elms). On this walk we came to the town's grist mill

 and discovered nearby a labyrinth which was a replica of the 11 circuit medieval labyrinth found in Chartres Cathedral in France.

It is one continuous path that winds into the centre and then back out again. I was intrigued by how incredibly complex it is and would never have believed it would take roughly ten minutes to walk the whole circuit. So... at the end of all that walking we needed a drink...I shan't be at all surprised if we come home from this holiday heavier than when we came!
This is where we've been staying for the last few days.

Front view of Cranberry Inn

Rear view of Cranberry Inn

Tomorrow we are driving north again to a place called Northfield on the borders of Vermont and New Hampshire.