Tag Archives: New Hampshire

Walking the Back Roads

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My upstate New Yorker blog follower (https://deescribesblog.wordpress.com/about) who came to Tasmania recently and walked with me along GASP to MONA, alerted me to the blogsite (https://walkingbackroads.wordpress.com/about/) re “Walking the Back Roads: A Hundred Years from Philadelphia to New Hampshire“.   She recognised my broad interest in people who decide to walk paths that are not normally walked. Thank you.  I love followers alerting me to such sites.

The walking the backroads blogsite has been inspired by a range of different books written by walkers of the highways and backroads of America through the 19th century. The blogger examines their stories.  He refers to the walk which he undertakes as ‘the long walk home’. Very interesting.

The concept of walking on backroads is instantly appealing to me. I wonder how many backroads exist which connect with Tasmania’s Derwent River in some way. I guess there may be hundreds and that they would all lead to interesting, mostly remote places. I imagine our backroads would peter out into bushland where sheep or cattle graze, rabbits multiply, indigenous wombats might run, Tasmanian devils fight for scraps of native food, or wallabies roam.

Suddenly the question comes to me; what is the definition of a backroad? When is a road no longer a main road? Is it a matter of how many people live along its edges?  Is it a matter of how many vehicles use it? Is it a matter of the road being unknown to the majority of the surrounding population? Is it possible to have a backroad in city areas or can they only be found in rural areas? Or are backroads, roads which are out of the way, difficult to find, and often not on maps?  And does a vehicular unsealed track count as a backroad?

In other words, how would I know if I was on a backroad? Is it sufficient that I make the decision?  Guess it would be. And I guess the locals may not refer to their road as a backroad even when I might.

Claremont beside the Derwent River

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I have wondered why there has been so much interest from USA readers for my posting about the Claremont Bowling Club.  The Club is an ordinary lawn bowling club the like of which is found in every town and city across Australia.  My blog site statistics do not indicate which part of the USA my readers come from, so more research was required.

The name Claremont derives from the French for clear mountain, and was introduced into England by refugee French Hugenots in the early 18th century.  The concept of clear mountain works here in Hobart because our town of Claremont sits comfortably at the feet of Mount Wellington.

There a city named Claremont in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, USA. It was named after Claremont, also known historically as ‘Clermont’, an 18th-century Palladian mansion of Thomas Pelham-Holles, Earl of Clare less than a mile south of the centre of Esher in Surrey, England.  This New Hampshire city is located between the Ascutney State Park and the Hawks Mountain area to the west and Mount Sunapee to the east.  Presumably offering clear mountains.

In addition, Wikipedia informs me that “Claremont is a college town on the eastern border of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Claremont is known for its many educational institutions, its tree-lined streets, and its historic buildings. In July 2007, it was rated by CNN/Money magazine as the fifth best place to live in the United States. Due to its large number of trees and residents with doctoral degrees, it is sometimes referred to as “The City of Trees and PhDs.”

Our Claremont in the City of Glenorchy within the Greater Hobart Area is very different than the Californian town with the same name.

In America, the Gold Rush of 1849 opened up California so I suspect the name Claremont was probably given by someone remembering their English heritage when the town was created in the 1880s, or by someone who had travelled west from the New Hampshire town of the same name.  I understand that the peaks of Mount Baldy, Mount San Antonio, Timber Mountain and others in the distance overlook the Californian city.

So now I have either or both California readers on the west coast of USA and New Hampshire readers on the east coast of the USA.  Will the real reader/s stand up!