Old King's Highway Upper Cape

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Sandwich

   Sandwich is the oldest town on Cape Cod, founded in 1637 by settlers from the Plymouth Colony, and it has the air of a place that has been looking at the same view for a very long time. Houses with weathered grey shingles stand around a village green, a mill pond and a small, historic grist mill, and the old Dexter Grist Mill still grinds corn on certain days. The town was home to the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company, founded in the 1820s, whose colourful pressed glass was once sold across America, and a museum on the main street displays the best pieces.

   Read the complete Sandwich write-up.

2. 2. Barnstable

   Barnstable is the biggest town on Cape Cod, though you would hardly guess it. It is really a string of villages along Cape Cod Bay, with Barnstable Village, Cotuit and Hyannis among them, and it takes in marsh, beach and farmland over a wide stretch of the Cape's arm. The town has almost forty-eight thousand people, and its long coast looks across to the curling tip of the Cape on one side and out to the Atlantic on the other.

   Read the complete Barnstable write-up.

3. 3. Yarmouth Port

   Yarmouth Port is a village on the north side of Cape Cod, and its main street, Route 6A, is one of the most beautiful old roads in New England. This is the Old King's Highway, laid out in the seventeenth century and lined with the houses of sea captains who made fortunes in the nineteenth. White clapboard mansions with widow's walks, grey shingled cottages and neat gardens sit behind low walls, and the whole village is a historic district. It is slow, quiet and handsome, and the pace seems to adjust you.

   Read the complete Yarmouth Port write-up.

4. 4. Dennis

   Dennis is spread across the upper arm of Cape Cod, with Route 6A running through it as a quiet, leafy road past antique shops, white churches and the long, shallow shore of Cape Cod Bay. Founded in the 1600s as part of Yarmouth and incorporated separately in 1793, it was named for the Reverend Josiah Dennis, a local minister, and in the early nineteenth century its sea captains and salt makers did well. Today the town is a mix of old village centres and summer cottages.

   Read the complete Dennis write-up.

5. 5. Brewster

   Brewster lies on the northern shore of Cape Cod, along the Cape Cod Bay side, where the tide goes out so far that the flats stretch for a mile or more, leaving a vast expanse of wet, rippled sand dotted with seabirds and people digging for clams. At low tide, you can walk a long way out toward the water, and at high tide, the bay fills quickly, so the locals check the tables. The town is quiet, wooded and relaxed, and the main road through it, Route 6A, is one of the loveliest in the region.

   Read the complete Brewster write-up.