In which Sid and Doris scoot around the Beltway to Appomattox and Lynchburg.
Sid has had a splendid pause in the adventuring, messing about with Joe on bikes, in a variety of boats and at least as many cars. One car that wasn’t running now does. One that was running now doesn’t, so a mixed report card there. We got the Mini out and parked it next to the JGG.
Doris has been away singing at Atlantic Harmony Brigade in Wilmington. Reunited, the trio have an afternoon of sailing, including the obligatory (oh gosh you have twisted my arm must we really) ice cream trip in Intermezzo when Doris gets a go at the helm as well as having the opportunity to admire the amazing shapes of the wake.
We thank Joe for his hospitality and the following morning set off south past the local plane on a stick.
The first part of the journey is west to Washington’s Beltway over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. At over four miles it was the longest steel bridge in the world when it opened in 1952.
While physically Washington’s ring road is like going around the M25, ‘inside the Beltway’ also carries a further meaning: anything which is mostly of interest to politicians, lobbyists and wonks. See also: ‘Wall Street’ shorthand for finance and ‘Main Street’ code for what real people are concerned about. Not sure if there is a US equivalent to Fleet Street. Perhaps inflation at 8 or 9% will interest them all.
We are not visiting churches today but do spot the Washington Temple of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. There will be a very small prize for anyone who can identify a similar building by Giles Gilbert Scott. Really small, unlike the building.
We are enjoying the place names. On this bit of map are Isle of Wight (well inland!), Gloucester, Surrey. Have a look.
And later this gem where exotic sounding Palmyra sits with pragmatic FarmVille. (Palmyra in Iraq is a city that came to prominence in Roman times and was dynamited by IS in 2015. In 1951 FarmVille in Prince Edward County was where black pupils protested against the poor quality and segregation of their schooling, well before better known events such as the Montgomery bus boycott of the 1960s.
Appomattox is where in 1865 General Grant accepted the surrender of the Confederate army of General Lee. We visit the museum that presents the election of Lincoln in 1860, the slave economy of cotton and tobacco plantations (about four million slaves), the Secession of the Confederate States and the subsequent Civil War very neutrally with much use of letters and other personal experience.
The terms of the surrender were quite magnanimous: essentially Go home and become Americans in a non-slave owning society.
The issues that the Civil War addressed are still being resolved.
In Lynchburg we stay at the Craddock Terry shoe factory which at its peak turned out 2,500 pairs a day and is now a hotel with a shoe theme.
Finally, this excellent poem seen in a shop window.