I-95 and all that...

The I-95 - where I stands for Interstate - is the road that takes you from the Bronx, in the northernmost part of New York City, along the Connecticut coastline past Stamford, New Haven and eventually to Providence, Rhode Island. The road makes up about a third of the trip to Boston and takes you past some fantastic scenery - expansive rivers and creeks, gorgeous houses with their own private jetties.

After New Haven, the route turns inland where the notorious autumn foliage of this part of the country becomes more and more prevalent as you approach Massachusetts.

There is such a huge contrast from the last time I made this trip back in March, when there was a covering of snow over the landscape, looked over by a grey and forboding sky. Where the trees were bare, the starkness of the branches has been replaced by a symphony of leaves that are a unique mix of light and dark greens, copper, orange, olive, ochre, maroon, chartreuse and rusty brown; where the ponds and lakes had frozen over, the sun now reflects its brilliance from their still water surfaces, fecund with plant life and beautifully unaware of the highway running past its own idyllic mini-ecosystem. It's strange feeling a sense of familiarity about a place or setting that has become so radically different to that which you know. Boston is a new town to me, yet I've been here before, it seems more alive, more positive and more friendly - is it simply because the sun is out, the snow is nowhere to be seen, Frog Pond is no longer an ice rink and it's not -8C outside?