Central Vermont Prowl

From Montpelier to Tunbridge








Monday is not a good day to tour Montpelier.
Vermont’s capitol building wlecomes visitors but the fabulous Vermont Historical Society Museum in the reconstructed Pavillion Hotel next door is closed Mondays. Ditto for the T.W. Wood Gallery at Vermont College. Still, there are interesting shops and, although The New England Culinary Institute (NECI) is less of a presence here than formerly, there are good restaurants. I met Erica Housekeeper, Vermont’s travel media person, for lunch at Phoebe’s and scoped out the tpwn's other hot new places to eat: Kismet and Ariel’s Riverside Café & Bar and That’s Life Soup.

There are a several places to stay in Montpelier but there are also some gloriously sited and comfortable farm B&Bs in nearby Plainfield and Marshfield, just minutes off route 2 but up in the hills.

Maplecroft B&B is my pick in Barre. Its welcoming and convenient, just uphill from Barre’s Main Street. Hosts Marianne Kotch and Paul Heller are longtime librarians (quilters, librarians and magicians all receive a 10% discount) and the house is filled with books you really want to read. Paul is also passionately interested in Barre’s early 19th century role in the history of America’s labor movement. He toured me through the Old Labor Hall which is dire need of restoration.


Barre boomed with the grante industry which here---in contrast to Maine's big quarry centers-- Stonington and the island of Vinalhaven,where schooners carried away the granite blocks—Barre's operations included--and still do-- not only the quarries but--because the huge granite blocks had to be reduced to products tht could be carried away by train-- dozens of enterprises dedicated to cutting, polishing and sculpting the stone. A century ago most finishers and sculptors were Italians and most died young, thanks to the stone dust.

Several years ago much money was invested in converting one of the granite sheds into a granite museum but, after a lot of fanfare and public investment, the project has stalled. On the positive side, Millstone Hill Trails in East Barre—70 miles of mountain biking/x-country trails-- have been developed on 350 acres pocked with dozens of defunct quarries by Pierre Couture, who inherited the land from his father.

My other Barre discovery was the Hilltop Restaurant, just down Quarry Hill from The Rock of Ages Visitors Center. Owned by the same family for three generations, Hilltop has great pasta, veal dishes, sauces and reasonable prices.

Both Barre and Montpelier are major crossroads (Route 2 and 302 are the major east-west roads across northern New England) and I-89. So many tourists pass through without quite knowing where they are, except that they want to get to Stowe.

What I’m noticing is that not a lot of people seem to know about the Mad River Valley just west of the Montpelier area, south of Stowe. In winter it's big, thanks to some of the best skiing in the East at both Sugarbush and Mad River Glen. In recent years, however, The Valley seems to have fallen below the summer tourist radar, which is a real shame.

I can’t think of another area in Vermont that combines such gorgeous farmscapes, mountain views, swimming holes and places to stay, eat and shop but that’s as little known. Weddings are big here but The Valley (as it's locally known) is noticeably less lively in summer than it once was. Not that local residents--if they don’t own shops, inns or restaurants—seem to mind.

What’s new here since my last edition is Claybrook, the 110-room condo hotel at the base of Sugarbush. It’s red with a central silo and an improvement on the current big box hotela at the bottom of most New England ski mountains. It was, however, dead.

Millbrook Inn has become my home away from home in the Mad River Valley. Innkeepers Thom and Joan Gorman are two of the most amazing people I know. Thom is an outstanding chef, known chiefly for his Indian dishes utilizing local ingredients. Joan makes great pastry and waits the tables in the inn’s restaurant, which opens on a garden overlooking a pond. Between winter and summer seasons the couple travel to the world’s little-touristed far corners, walking and paddling as much as possible and picking up new wines and recipes.

It’s interesting to watch The Valley change. I’ve written so many stories about it over the years that I’ve known most of the people who shaped it from the ‘60s until now. However, many of these are no longer here, or leaving. Betsy Pratt, who has shepherded Mad River Glen for more than 30 years and is responsible for its status as a beloved co-op owned mountain sans snow boarding or major snowmaking or , is 80 this year and swears that she is selling her vintage Mad River Barn.

Ann Day, a noted local poet and photographer, has deeded her Knoll Farm—where I’ve stayed repeatedly when it was an inn—to the Vermont Land Trust. It’s now a combination non-profit farm and a retreat center and still one of the most beautiful spots in Vermont. I stopped by and walked a path up through the fields, waiting for Helen Whybrow, who by coincidence is one of my former editors and now lives here and helps run the place.

This week was dogged by the same intermittent thunder storms that kept me wet last week and it poured as I left The Valley behind, climbing up over the Roxbury Gap road and down through Northfield, finally letting up in Brookfield’s Pond Village at Green Trails Inn. Again this is a place with many memories, the place I wrote the proposal for How New England Happened, my first book, and now owned by someone who was a longtime friend before she bought it. Jane Doerfer is a Renaissance women. She was development director for the Massachusetts Art Council when I first met her and went on to author several best selling cookbooks among many other things.

Pond Village itself is magical. The pond is so deep it’s spanned by a floating bridge which, unfortunately, is presently impassable to cars (I spotted a small fish swimming on it ) but still a popular place from which to fish. The small, neighboring park is a great spot from which to swim. Ariel’s Restaurant, destination dining for much of Central Vermont, is here too but we dined at the Three Stallion Inn in nearby Randolph because I’d never eaten there. No complaints!

Perhaps it was because this week has been so relaxing that I slowed way down on Friday, my fifth day on the road again. I stopped in to see Al Floyd at Floyd's General Store in Randolph Center, browsed through downtown Randloph and revisited the Three Stallion Inn. Big finds for the day: Neighborly Farms (good cheese) in North Randolph, Devil’s Den Farm Homestay in Chelsea and the transformed Village Store in Tunbridge where Frenchman JP DeBeuf makes the croissants, pastas and ice creams he serves as well as sells.