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Lake Sunapee Region Cultural Offerings. For 64 years, the New London Barn Players, New Hampshire's longest operating summer theater, have presented matinee and nightly performances of musicals and comedies from mid-June to Labor Day. Despite its generally low-key flavor, the area bustles during the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen's annual crafts fair, the nation's oldest, which attracts 1,500 craftsmen and 50,000 visitors for a week in early August to Mount Sunapee State Park. Mount Sunapee State Park. A 700-foot-long beach is great for swimming in the crystal-clear waters of Lake Sunapee. Across the road is the 2,700-foot high Mount Sunapee, criss-crossed with hiking and ski trails and its summit lodge accessible in summer and winter by a 6,800-foot-long gondola lift. The park is also the site of such special events as a gem and mineral festival, the Great American Milk Bicycle Race and the New England championship Lake Sunapee Bike Race. Sports. All the usual are available, plus some in abundance. Golfers have their choice of four semi-public country clubs and smaller courses: the venerable Lake Sunapee Country Club and Inn, the hilly and challenging Eastman Golf Links in Grantham, picturesque Twin Lake Villa beside Little Sunapee, and the Country Club of New Hampshire, rated one of the nation's top 75 public courses by Golf Digest. Downhill skiers get their fill at Mount Sunapee or King Ridge ski areas, and cross-country skiers take over the fairways at the area's golf clubs in winter. Lake Excursions. From Sunapee Harbor, the 150-passenger M.V. Mt. Sunapee II gives 90-minute narrated tours the length of Lake Sunapee at 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. daily from mid-June to Labor Day, and 2:30 weekends in spring and fall. The steamer M.V. Kearsarge offers buffet-supper cruises at 5:30 and 7:45 nightly in summer. Another way to view the lake is to drive the Scenic Three-Mile Loop around Sunapee Harbor; you'll find striking new houses interspersed with older traditional cottages. Shopping. For a town its size, New London has more than its share of good shopping - spread out along much of the length of Main Street and clustered in shopping centers and a mall along Route 11 on the southwest edge of town. Along Main Street are excellent crafts stores like Artisan's Workshop (which also has a new branch in Sunapee Harbor), the Spring Ledge Farm flower and produce stand, and the kind of clothing stores one finds in college towns. C.B. Coburn has "unique gifts for home and palate." Plan some extra time for a visit to Baynham's Country Store and Cafe, a sprawling emporium of varied merchandise, some of it shown in room-style settings. In Guild, to the southwest of Sunapee, is the Dorr Mill Store, a large and attractive shop specializing in woolens. Despite its location at the mill, this is no mill outlet and the prices are what you'd expect to pay back home. Worth a side trip is Nunsuch, Route 114, South Sutton, the picturesque wooden home and farm of Rita and Courtney Haase, producers of Udderly Delicious goat cheese. Not your ordinary cheesemakers, Courtney is a former cloistered nun and Rita, her proper New Orleans mother, has five offspring scattered around the world. Their 21 milking goats, all but one named for nuns Courtney has lived with (to the amusement and consternation of some), yield about 70 pounds of cheese a day, which the Haases sell herbed or plain from their kitchen or by mail-order. We bought some of the herbed variety to take home and it was delicious. At a recent visit, Courtney had acquired a smoker and was starting to smoke some of her cheese. She also was running day-long workshops on cheese-making "for the serious dairy person." Extra-Special The Fells at the
John Hay Estate Three generations of diplomat John Hay's family have enjoyed the rugged landscape and cultivated gardens they developed along nearly 1,000 hillside acres above Lake Sunapee since 1891. Now the public also can enjoy a rare combination of nature preserve, botanical garden, library, historic house and landscape in a single location. The Fells Estate is maintained as a state historic site, and the gardens were replanted in 1994 by the national Garden Conservancy as a regional center for horticultural education. The property includes the 163-acre John Hay National Wildlife Refuge. Depending on season, masses of mountain laurel, rhododendron, azaleas, blueberries, perennial borders, a rose terrace, a rock garden, an old walled garden and more can be seen. Noted nature writer John Hay, son of the late horticulturist and archeologist Clarence Hay, and his sister Adele frequent a private cottage reserved for their use. Visitors park in a lot off Route 103-A and walk a quarter of a mile to the main house and gardens. (603) 763-4789. Guided house tours on weekends and holidays; grounds open daily, 10 to 6, late May through Columbus Day. Free. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places in New England, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2004. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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