St Mary's in Maryland

We've just come back from a lovely day away - a "find" I think for family visitors! Ninety minutes down south from Washington, on the side of the Chesapeake bay that tourists tend not to go. You pass a bit of woodland sectioned off for the military bases around here, you pass occasional squares of home & lawn cleared out of the trees, and you get strip malls with autopart stores and gas stations and signs like "Bait. Guns. Ammo. Lots of Handguns." At the end you come out in what feels like the Low Countries - fields and blue water and little boats, and signs telling you that you've reached St Mary's City - the "first landing" for 17th Century English Catholic settlers in Maryland. There's little there now: you turn right down a road where a deer jumped out across our path, right again, and there's the Brome-Howard Inn, a lovely old house by the water. It was what we now call a "Holy Grail" find - cosy attic rooms and excellent food all under one roof. Tom was even brought his own chicken pasta supper on a tray by a waitress called Ashley who formally shook his hand and rather charmed him. When we left him sleeping and went for candlelit supper in the library, Richard ate luscious lamb, I had a very fresh seafood stew, and Ashley smuggled us a piece of birthday cake to take to Tom, from a locals' celebration in the bigger dining room. R and I are just about to have a pretty hectic week, probably involving an overnight for me on Tuesday covering the Texas and Ohio primaries. It was lovely just to get out of Washington, get out of time, and drift away for a little weekend.