Dodgy Coke in the 1700s

Twice before I’ve been to Richmond but never to the famous Colonial Williamsburg. This has to be remedied. Of course it has to be a stinking hot day when we make the trip. This searing heatwave has pretty much followed us across the USA since South Dakota. We tough it out.

The oddest thing happens when we arrive at the Williamsburg Visitor Centre to buy our tickets for the day. A sportily-dressed Chinese-American couple approaches us and asks if we will be part of their tour group. They need 15 and have only 13. Two more and they can obtain a discount price. We will be part of their discount price if we join their group. No strings attached. We never have to see them again. How about it? Hmm. OK. So the woman, who turns out to be a New York banker, liaises tour tickets while we chat to her partner who turns out to be a New York pathologist. She gives us the tickets. We never see them again. We have saved $40.

Williamsburg is not too crowded on this hot week day. This is good.

We are no sooner off the shuttle bus and through the gates than someone fires a musket very near at hand. Boom! I am ten feet in the air.

It is part of the shtick. There is a learn-to-fire a musket shack. Not a very useful art, if you ask me.

We are surrounded by 18th Century ticky tack. They call it the market place.They have stalls selling lovely period straw hats. $35. They are selling cookery books and vanilla pods…

But not modern day drinks.

We are feeling as dry as a dingo’s dick and need to hydrate if we are to walk this quite considerable recreated town.

We try another period shop. No drinks.

We see a sign. How odd. Drinks around the back.

We go around the back of an historic building and into a lovely little courtyard crammed with picket fences and beautifully-groomed hedges. We spot, on the far side, a tiny outhouse within which are two huge modern drinks vending machines. One has just water and the other assorted fizzy drinks plus water. The one with water has an Out Of Order notice pinned to it. We put a credit card in the other machine and try for water. No go. Try again. No go. Puzzle for a while. Try again. It must be out of water. Diet Coke, then. Hey presto. A bottle rolls out. But it is only a third full. It is sealed and cold and straight from the machine. But it is only a third full. Weird. Perhaps the machine is rebelling against being an anachronism in a period town.

I take the drink to another period shop where a woman talking in quaint olde worlde English is selling quilting materials. When she sees the bottle and hears my story, she dissolves into hysteria. So sorry I find this funny but isn’t it funny, she says, completely dropping her 18th Century character.

Clearly, not a lot of funny things happen in Williamsburg.

When she has composed herself, she produces an anachronistic telephone from under the counter and calls the ticketing store where she subsequently directs me to receive a refund.

And indeed, a woman in period costume and talking in period style, takes the dud bottle and gives me some proper modern money. No, they don’t sell drinks in there. But I can go next door to the tavern. There, a man in period costume, talking in period style, takes my modern money and hands over an

ice-cold bottle of modern water. Now we can look at the living museum which is Colonial Williamsburg, the Revolutionary City, once the capital of Virginia and loyal to the British Crown.

It is not what I had expected. It is such expansive real estate. The main road is so terribly wide. It seems strangely sparse. Horses with carts are standing about. Some clop slowly up the street.

It’s how it was. The Americans do these things very lovingly and carefully before they make a fortune out of them.

This recreated town is extremely proud of its historical integrity - to the point that its blacksmith shop makes all the nails and locks

and bars and rails and assorted metalworks exactly as was done in the early days and these things are used in the restoration and maintenance of the property.

We visit said blacksmith shop which has smoke soaring from its chimney and watch heavy work going on. It is a working enterprise. A red-headed girl in period garb tells us all about it as we watch the smith pulling red-hot iron from the fire and beating it to form.

We see the carpentry shop,too. It is the same story. The workers in there

are artisans proudly practising the techniques of their forefathers.

We visit the grand old courthouse. It provides a bit of a sit-down while we listen to a costumed woman give colourful descriptions of criminal justice of the time. The stocks are just outside where people were pinned in by their heads. For good measure they used to nail criminals’ ears to the wood while they were in there. Bruce is fascinated by this piece of new information. We need to look at those stocks very carefully.

We walk slowly in the heat. The kitchen garden is extensive. It is wonderful. It sells all sorts of period equipment as well as heritage seeds.

Walking down one handsome street, we meet a woman

who seems to be rallying folk for a talk. We join in and find ourselves sitting upon benches in a garden, hearing all about an important townsman and his lovely house. Once we have heard his story, rattled off in the mode of a guide who has told this story too many times before, we are invited to inspect his lovely old house. And his lovely formal gardens. It is, of course, lovely.

Oh, and look, there is the slave house. And slaves were allowed to have their own little gardens. Lovely?

We walk on, past pleasant buildings. Not everything is living demonstration space. But this one is. It is the Governor’s Palace.

A young performer in period garb gives us his all. He knows his stuff and he has panache. We move from room to room learning of the grand life of the privileged in this grand old mansion, in the recreated era inhabited by Lord Dunmore. As we move into the grand ballroom with its paintings of king and consort, our guide executes a sweeping formal bow from the waist and suggests his surprise that we all have not done so in respect to the British Crown. We are tutored in formal bows of the period and we do the right thing. This lavish ballroom is painted a vivid shade of erk green, which apparently was the chic colour of the day and was believed to stimulate the appetite. The room also is carpeted, hand-made carpets being ever so prestigious at the time, says the guide.

The erk green clearly has conveyed its message. We are hungry. We repair to Chowning’s Tavern in the main street where a woman in period garb takes our name and tells us we have 15 minutes to wait for a table. We sit and watch the world go by - well, the tourists. They are a mixed bunch. Mainly American.

We are led to a table upstairs in this handsome old inn building. Everything is rustic, especially the stairs. Signs warn you how rustic they are. Take care.

Waiters in period garb take our orders from a period-style menu. Astonished to find them on the menu, I choose pasties. Bruce orders Brunswick stew.

A young girl in period garb comes in and plays old tunes on the fiddle. She will do any requests of popular 18th century songs, she says. Silence from the diners. She plays on.

The food is terrific.

Now we head off for the Capitol building, the most important building in the town, the head of law and government. A splendid edifice it is of beautiful decorative brick work.

The original was destroyed by fire. This is a painstaking recreation.

Our tour guide appears to be a fairly mundane, dumpy woman unflattered by her ill-fitting period garb. And then she starts to talk. She turns out to be a wonderfully well-informed teacher who knows how to engage attention. She leads us through the processes of government in a series of handsome great chambers and finishes with a mock trial in which she selects the children in the group and gives them roles to play, thus ensuring that they are thoroughly involved and learning. It is charming and edifying. We adore this guide and the experience in general.

But we are feeling just a bit spent in the heat. It is a bigger town than one had imagined. We have done a lot of walking.

The day is no longer young.

We meander back, stopping at little mock shops, talking to the odd costume performer on the job as local colour. Oh, look, a post office. We go in. It not only sells cards but it postmarks them and dispatches them. Yes, please. My grandies are covering the fridge in the postcards I send from this epic road trip. They will love these.

And then it is back on the shuttle bus which takes us all around the modern, working, residential town of Williamsburg for pleasant good measure as we head back to the vast souvenirs hub of the visitor centre and the carpark.

Oh, and don’t we appreciate the air conditioning when we get there.