Torrent

The Niagara River flows towards Canada, reaching the border at the famous dropping point. Consequently, trying to see Niagara Falls from the American side is rather like trying to focus on the tip of your own nose. We didn't appreciate this subtle piece of geography until we got there, noticing that for most Americans Niagara Falls (the town) is little more than a petrol and toilet stop on their way to the Canadian town also called Niagara Falls. This town (the Canadian one) looms across the river, a jumble of high-rise buildings, towers, casinos and conspicuous wealth.

By contrast, the American Niagara Falls town (city, actually) is a down-at-heel urban sprawl with the through-road to Canada clearly marked but little in the way of direction to the US side of the Falls. For foreign visitors driving on the other side of the street in a car that in other countries would suffice for a community minibus this was confusing and stressful, but we eventually found the Niagara State Park with its associated attractions. Various lookout points give views of water disappearing over an edge, and glimpses of splashing torrents below. There are two parts to the Falls; the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls. The Horseshoe is the one on all the photos, and that's the one you can't see at all from the American side. I felt underwhelmed, frankly.

More satisfying were the walkway beside the bridal veil falls and the Maid Of The Mist boat trip. On the walkway we got drenched in spray and nearly blown off our feet by wind. It reminded me of so many family walks in Peebles. One section of the walkway is named the Hurricane Deck. Directly under the waterfall and in the teeth of the displacement-generated wind I got a sense of the raw power of the waterfall, but of greater interest to me was the very prominent NO SMOKING sign on the railing beside the cascading water. Who says the Americans have no irony ?

The boat trip took us into the Horseshoe Falls where the thundering noise, flying spray and churning turquoise water, coupled with the experience of being surrounded on three sides by towering torrents, was another experience of nature's power unleashed. I had felt this in the desert, and at Yosemite when we reached the top of Glacier Point and looked over a rocky edge to a 4000 foot sheer drop to the valley floor. Having lived all my life on two small islands I'm moved by the scale of America; its size and its extremes.

Fresh from yet another wonder of the world we undertook a five-hour car journey (an inch or so on the map) to our first New England destination. A beautiful evening with the sun setting over cornfields and autumnal forests, the light slanting across red-painted hip-roofed farmhouses with giant grain silos and - honestly - old tractors parked out in the golden fields.