Going Up Mount Washington

Most of today has been taken up with an ascent of Mt. Washington, New England's highest peak at over 6000 feet.

This shows the Cog Railway tackling the last couple of hundred of those.

You can also drive up the Auto Road (visible just behind the train) in your own car; we chose the Guided Minibus tour and I was very glad we did: the road gets uncomfortably narrow in parts, especially on the 20per cent of it near the top that is just gravelled track, and there are no safety barriers anywhere between the road and some precipitous drops.

We were blessed with the best day they've had in ages: visibility was up to 100 miles towards the Atlantic and there was low cloud below the summit to look down on, a relatively rare phenomenon here. On the minus side, wind speeds were up to 60 mph (mind you the record here is 240 plus!) so despite the sun the actual wind chill temperature was below 30F.

It really was the most spectacular experience.

Earlier we enjoyed a walk to the waterfalls of Diana's Baths and a visit to the picturesque village of Jackson, where we notched up our first covered bridge.