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B&B&B = Bed, breakfast, and British in Maine
By DAN SCHLOSSBERG
England swings like a pendulum do.
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two.
Westminster Abbey, the Tower Big Ben.
The rosy red cheeks of the little children.
The owners of the Inn Britannia, a bed-and-breakfast they opened six years ago, brought those images to life in a most unlikely spot: halfway up the Maine Coast, in the town of Searsport on Penobscot Bay.
Caren Lorelle and Susan Pluff were successful St. Louis real estate executives when they decided to parlay their love of all things English into their version of an idyllic home-away-from-home.
Their backgrounds were perfect, since Lorelle knows European history and Pluff has more than a passing acquaintance with English literature. Although their timing wasn't great, coming just before the 2001 terrorist attacks rocked the travel industry, perseverance paid off.
The one-time sea captain's home is now fit for a king. Since England doesn't have one at the moment, Lorelle and Pluff aim to treat every guest like visiting royalty.
Rooms are regal beyond their British names: the Brittania suite features Shakespeare memorabilia; the Windsor room reflects the royal House of Windsor; Brighton suggests a coastal resort with beaches, boardwalk, and sea breezes; the Dover Room recalls the white cliffs and blue birds of the seaside community that was England's front line of defense in two world wars; and Nottingham brings back the Norman image of wealth and power, challenged only by the elusive Robin Hood.
The peaceful hues of the Cotswolds room reminds guests of England's mid-country farms, gardens, and stone structures linked by winding lanes. Its polar opposite, also part of Inn Britannia, is the London room, overloaded with London memorabilia culled from Hyde Park, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, and even the notorious Tower of London.
Nothing escapes the British invasion. A first-floor common area, perfect for afternoon tea or evening reading and bursting with English antiques, is called The Drawing Room. The TV room on the second floor is named The Southampton, last port o' call for the Titanic before her ill-fated maiden voyage to America in 1912. Only at Inn Britannia can guests watch A Night to Remember while surrounded by Titanic memorabilia.
For families seeking seclusion, there's also a loft-style apartment that contains its own kitchen, dining area, living room, cable-TV, and sleeping accommodations for four. It also has more nooks and crannies than Fenway Park, so bumps on the head are part of the equation.
All rooms, including the apartment, are air-conditioned, a necessity during Maine's short summer season. Once the sun sets, however, a sweater is more important than air-conditioning.
Thanks to its geography, the sun rises early in Searsport. If the A/C is turned off, guests are likely to be awakened by local roosters playing reveille with their vocal cords. With a chicken coop just on the other side of the inn's gravel driveway, nobody seems to mind trading a few cackles for fresh eggs. Minutes after the innkeepers scoop them up, the eggs arrive on breakfast plates disguised in various gourmet derivations.
Lorelle takes her concoctions seriously and has won awards for her culinary expertise, which ranges from Plymouth pie to Cornish baked eggs, Queen Victoria's pancake, and wild blueberry double-decker toast, accompanied by homemade butter and yogurt plus home-grown herbs and veggies. Scones, crumpets, popovers, and ubiquitous chocolate-chip cookies arrive in assorted sizes, while well-placed containers of Hershey's Kisses also please patrons of the inn.
Nothing is more pleasing than its location: close enough to Bar Harbor to enjoy it but far enough away not to be bothered by it. The clamor, commercialism, and concentration of cars may be tolerable for a day or so but nothing beats the tranquility of Searsport.
Isolated yet not boring, there are enough activities to keep guests busy for a week. Antique shops, including old bookstores, abound along Route 1, while wild blueberries flourish in the aptly-named Blue Hill Peninsula. Castine, the coastal community that houses the Maine Maritime Academy, has actually been claimed by four different countries- and has markers that reveal that history.
Canada, only two hours away by car, is the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt's beloved Campobello. There's also a high-speed ferry (the CAT) between Bar Harbor and Nova Scotia.
Closer to home for Inn Britannia guests are the Penobscot Marine Museum, featuring a dozen 19th century structures with maritime memorabilia; Fort Knox, an enormous stone complex whose cannons were never fired; and Acadia National Park, a scenic oceanfront expanse high above Bar Harbor.
There are sightseeing day-trips and overnight cruises- many on schooners recreated to 19th century specifications- plus voyages in search of whales and puffins, which have repopulated Eastern Egg Rock in the Gulf of Maine. The "parrots of the sea" share prime time with dolphins, porpoises, sharks, sea lions, and several whale species.
Camera buffs will love the sight and sound of Thunder Hole, a narrow granite channel below Acadia Park Loop Road. Wind and waves surge with the regularity Old Faithful lacks.
Lighthouses are everywhere, with more than two-dozen along the craggy coast of Penobscot Bay between Owl's Head and Mount Desert Island. They are the streetcars of the sea, saved from the dustbin of history by preservationists who appreciate the grace of a bygone era.
There's a steam train (the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad), discount shopping (LL Bean, Cannon, and other outlets), summer theater (the Maskers in Belfast), a winery (Winterport), and even a transportation museum (Boothbay).
The water temperature might be a bit chilly for most visitors but seals aren't the only ones who like sunning on the rocks; the perches at Schoodic Point and Pemaquid Point are perfect spots for spotting canoes, sea kayaks, and the myriad of lobster traps bobbing up and down in the choppy current.
Maine is the main place for lobster, with lobster pounds and shacks more plentiful than traffic lights. Nowhere on earth is lobster so succulent, maybe because it was swimming in the wild only hours earlier.
Searsport is close to Skowhegan, where the 180-year-old Skowhegan Fair is the oldest continuously-operating event of its type anywhere in the United States. There's an agricultural fair in Blue Hill and an ongoing street fair in Bar Harbor, where people-watching has become a sport.
Guests of Inn Britannia don't need to venture far. They can meander down the property's dirt path to the secluded beach. They can camp out in the gazebo with a good book. Or they can read about the history of the house, built by William Butman in 1830. Not surprisingly, his family had English roots.
A Cape Horner sea captain, Butman was the scion of a family that later lost two men at sea. Both are immortalized in the Monument to Those Lost at Sea, the famous monument at Gloucester, Mass.
For further information, see Inn Britannia, 132 West Main St., Searsport, ME 04974 (Tel. 207-548-2007 or www.InnBritannia.com
Former AP newsman Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is president of the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA), travel editor of ConsumerAffairs.com, and author of 32 baseball books, including this year's Baseball Gold: Mining Nuggets from Our National Pastime.
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two.
Westminster Abbey, the Tower Big Ben.
The rosy red cheeks of the little children.
The owners of the Inn Britannia, a bed-and-breakfast they opened six years ago, brought those images to life in a most unlikely spot: halfway up the Maine Coast, in the town of Searsport on Penobscot Bay.
Caren Lorelle and Susan Pluff were successful St. Louis real estate executives when they decided to parlay their love of all things English into their version of an idyllic home-away-from-home.
Their backgrounds were perfect, since Lorelle knows European history and Pluff has more than a passing acquaintance with English literature. Although their timing wasn't great, coming just before the 2001 terrorist attacks rocked the travel industry, perseverance paid off.
The one-time sea captain's home is now fit for a king. Since England doesn't have one at the moment, Lorelle and Pluff aim to treat every guest like visiting royalty.Rooms are regal beyond their British names: the Brittania suite features Shakespeare memorabilia; the Windsor room reflects the royal House of Windsor; Brighton suggests a coastal resort with beaches, boardwalk, and sea breezes; the Dover Room recalls the white cliffs and blue birds of the seaside community that was England's front line of defense in two world wars; and Nottingham brings back the Norman image of wealth and power, challenged only by the elusive Robin Hood.
The peaceful hues of the Cotswolds room reminds guests of England's mid-country farms, gardens, and stone structures linked by winding lanes. Its polar opposite, also part of Inn Britannia, is the London room, overloaded with London memorabilia culled from Hyde Park, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, and even the notorious Tower of London.
Nothing escapes the British invasion. A first-floor common area, perfect for afternoon tea or evening reading and bursting with English antiques, is called The Drawing Room. The TV room on the second floor is named The Southampton, last port o' call for the Titanic before her ill-fated maiden voyage to America in 1912. Only at Inn Britannia can guests watch A Night to Remember while surrounded by Titanic memorabilia.
For families seeking seclusion, there's also a loft-style apartment that contains its own kitchen, dining area, living room, cable-TV, and sleeping accommodations for four. It also has more nooks and crannies than Fenway Park, so bumps on the head are part of the equation.
All rooms, including the apartment, are air-conditioned, a necessity during Maine's short summer season. Once the sun sets, however, a sweater is more important than air-conditioning.
Thanks to its geography, the sun rises early in Searsport. If the A/C is turned off, guests are likely to be awakened by local roosters playing reveille with their vocal cords. With a chicken coop just on the other side of the inn's gravel driveway, nobody seems to mind trading a few cackles for fresh eggs. Minutes after the innkeepers scoop them up, the eggs arrive on breakfast plates disguised in various gourmet derivations.
Lorelle takes her concoctions seriously and has won awards for her culinary expertise, which ranges from Plymouth pie to Cornish baked eggs, Queen Victoria's pancake, and wild blueberry double-decker toast, accompanied by homemade butter and yogurt plus home-grown herbs and veggies. Scones, crumpets, popovers, and ubiquitous chocolate-chip cookies arrive in assorted sizes, while well-placed containers of Hershey's Kisses also please patrons of the inn.
Nothing is more pleasing than its location: close enough to Bar Harbor to enjoy it but far enough away not to be bothered by it. The clamor, commercialism, and concentration of cars may be tolerable for a day or so but nothing beats the tranquility of Searsport.Isolated yet not boring, there are enough activities to keep guests busy for a week. Antique shops, including old bookstores, abound along Route 1, while wild blueberries flourish in the aptly-named Blue Hill Peninsula. Castine, the coastal community that houses the Maine Maritime Academy, has actually been claimed by four different countries- and has markers that reveal that history.
Canada, only two hours away by car, is the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt's beloved Campobello. There's also a high-speed ferry (the CAT) between Bar Harbor and Nova Scotia.
Closer to home for Inn Britannia guests are the Penobscot Marine Museum, featuring a dozen 19th century structures with maritime memorabilia; Fort Knox, an enormous stone complex whose cannons were never fired; and Acadia National Park, a scenic oceanfront expanse high above Bar Harbor.
There are sightseeing day-trips and overnight cruises- many on schooners recreated to 19th century specifications- plus voyages in search of whales and puffins, which have repopulated Eastern Egg Rock in the Gulf of Maine. The "parrots of the sea" share prime time with dolphins, porpoises, sharks, sea lions, and several whale species.Camera buffs will love the sight and sound of Thunder Hole, a narrow granite channel below Acadia Park Loop Road. Wind and waves surge with the regularity Old Faithful lacks.
Lighthouses are everywhere, with more than two-dozen along the craggy coast of Penobscot Bay between Owl's Head and Mount Desert Island. They are the streetcars of the sea, saved from the dustbin of history by preservationists who appreciate the grace of a bygone era.
There's a steam train (the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad), discount shopping (LL Bean, Cannon, and other outlets), summer theater (the Maskers in Belfast), a winery (Winterport), and even a transportation museum (Boothbay).
The water temperature might be a bit chilly for most visitors but seals aren't the only ones who like sunning on the rocks; the perches at Schoodic Point and Pemaquid Point are perfect spots for spotting canoes, sea kayaks, and the myriad of lobster traps bobbing up and down in the choppy current.
Maine is the main place for lobster, with lobster pounds and shacks more plentiful than traffic lights. Nowhere on earth is lobster so succulent, maybe because it was swimming in the wild only hours earlier.
Searsport is close to Skowhegan, where the 180-year-old Skowhegan Fair is the oldest continuously-operating event of its type anywhere in the United States. There's an agricultural fair in Blue Hill and an ongoing street fair in Bar Harbor, where people-watching has become a sport.
Guests of Inn Britannia don't need to venture far. They can meander down the property's dirt path to the secluded beach. They can camp out in the gazebo with a good book. Or they can read about the history of the house, built by William Butman in 1830. Not surprisingly, his family had English roots.
A Cape Horner sea captain, Butman was the scion of a family that later lost two men at sea. Both are immortalized in the Monument to Those Lost at Sea, the famous monument at Gloucester, Mass.
For further information, see Inn Britannia, 132 West Main St., Searsport, ME 04974 (Tel. 207-548-2007 or www.InnBritannia.com
Former AP newsman Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is president of the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA), travel editor of ConsumerAffairs.com, and author of 32 baseball books, including this year's Baseball Gold: Mining Nuggets from Our National Pastime.
