For our first US vacation we've headed inland from Boston to the far north west of Massachusetts and then north into Vermont, known as the Green Mountain State. It should be known as the Foody State - if we were living in Vermont for the year Barry and I would return home to Porthcawl about 10 stone heavier each. Every village seems to have at worst a country store with lots of local goodies and in many cases there are whole strips of local produce stores with cheese, maple syrup, ice cream, chocolate and apples being particularly prominent and much too tasty for our own good!

We travelled east to west through Massachusetts on Saturday to the village of Lenox where the Tanglewood Estate hosts the Tanglewood Music Festival each summer. The number of trees lining the roads and covering the hills increased rapidly as we headed west and remained a theme throughout our week's holiday. We had always been rather dubious about the claims of the splendours of the New England fall but having seen the almost uninterrupted covering of trees in almost every direction throughout the region with the green broken very occasionally by the gold or red of a tree just starting to turn I think we are starting to appreciate that the fall leaves will be spectacular and well worth seeing.

Anyway, after having a brief stop in a stationary queue of traffic to allow a tortoise to cross the road (yes really) we arrived at Tanglewood where we had booked tickets for an afternoon family concert featuring a woodwind quintet playing a programme of pieces with a theme of storytelling through music (Flight of the Bumblebee, Carnival of the Animals etc). Tanglewood is said to be one of the premier music festivals in the world and is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The festival features concerts in a variety of music styles and hosts prominent artistes such as James Taylor, Yo Yo Ma and John Williams. John Williams was conducting a concert of his film music in the evening following our afternoon concert but the tickets were all sold out.

What makes the Tanglewood festival so enjoyable is that the two concert venues on the estate (which is huge) are semi-outdoors so the audience can sit either in the hall itself or on the lawn outside. Our concert was in the smaller hall where the back wall had massive doors which opened out into the lawn whilst the main hall is known as the Shed - it has a roof and pillars but no surrounding walls. The whole estate is lush, green and leafy and very beautiful, particularly in the gorgeous sunshine when we were there. Before our concert there were various events laid on for kids including trying out a variety of new instruments. Isabel and Rachel were very tempted to swap to the brass section!