USA - A lighthouse - 120 miles inland

Today is the first of two days being spent in the Hudson Valley a very scenic area running upstate from New York City. It took about two hours on the train - a train which followed the river for almost the whole time (sit on the left hand side going north) - to reach the city of Hudson.

The reason for this trip was a visit to the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse. The river is a major shipping route and like any river or coastal area has sandbanks and islands and therefore all the way up there was a chain of lighthouses to guide the maritime traffic. Only a few are still in use and have been automated. The Hudson-Athens Light - which still shows a fixed green light - has been taken over by a small band of volunteers who open it up to the public one Saturday a month during the summer. The main problem for visitors though is that it is in the middle of the river.

A ferry takes you over and you can stay there for one or two hours and of course being in the middle of the river means the views are fantastic.  

The lighthouse keeper and his family lived on site and a film was being shown in which the children, as adults, were talking about their childhood. One comment that seemed to sum up life there was that when they eventually went to live in a house in a nearby town they were finally able to play hide and seek properly! 

Whilst the lighthouse itself is square the base is not and in the upstream direction the base forms a point, this is to deflect lumps of ice in winter away from the building.

The team of volunteers there were very nice and genuinely pleased that someone from the UK had made it up to see them.

From Hudson I then caught a train downstream to Poughkeepsie which has recently joined the Hudson Valley tourist circuit with the "Walkway Over The Hudson". Rather like the High Line in New York an old railway has been used to help regenerate an area and in this case it is in the form of a massive, disused, railway bridge.

After standing derelict after catching fire in 1974, the bridge was rebuilt and reopened in 2009 with as a high level public walkway. Not only providing stunning views of the river but also linking trails on both sides and forming, like the High Line, a linear park.

I'm going to admit that my fear of heights got the better of me with this one and I walked to the edge and took some photos but did not walk across. It's still pretty impressive stuff though.