Well, I've walked 20 miles so far, from the New England Conservatory of Music to Acapulcos in Sudbury. The next two miles takes me to the border of Sudbury and Marlborough, the next 17th-century town on US-20/Boston Post Rd. This part of Sudbury is less commercial and has more farms and wooded areas.
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| Acapulcos to 1119 Boston Post Rd, Sudbury |
As I walk along I pass Wayside Inn Road that leads to one of the fun sites in Sudbury:
Longfellow's Wayside Inn, a business that has been operating since 1716. (Click on the link to go to the website and learn all about this interesting place.) It's a historic site as well as a tavern and bed-and-breakfast hotel. It looks like a fun place to visit or stay, though I don't have time today to make the detour. But here is a look at the Inn:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited the inn (then known as Howe's Tavern) with his publisher in 1862, a visit that prompted the author to write a book about it,
Tales of a Wayside Inn, which resulted in making the Inn much more popular than it had been before.
Another Henry, Henry Ford, owned the property from 1923 to 1945. He created the "village" concept there--where there are a number of buildings brought together to make a "living" museum such that visitors will feel they are in that time period. The concept has been used in many historical sites over the years, but Longfellow's Wayside Inn was the
first of its kind in the country, predating even Greenfield Village and Colonial Williamsburg.
Also off the beaten path in Sudbury is a related site: Ford's Folly. Now part of a hiking trail, this would-be dam was constructed by Ford to provide a reservoir to his historical village for fire-fighting purposes. Read about this interesting mistake at the
Atlas Obscura website.
Well, I've reached the border of Sudbury and Marlborough where there is a pleasant-looking farm with cows off to the left. This ends my journey (and my two hours of practice) for today.
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| 1119 Boston Post Road |
