During my recent trip to Cape Ann, I went into Boston with my family on four days: a day trip, an evening at Fenway Park, and a day-and-a-half at the end of our stay. The weather ranged from cool and incredibly rainy on the day trip, to warm and sunny at the baseball game, to extremely hot on our penultimate day and hot, humid and sometimes rainy on our last day. Ah, New England summers!

I'm a city girl and tend to fill two-week holidays with multiple destination and many activities, but when my parents suggested a family holiday at a beach house near Gloucester, 40 miles northeast of Boston, the idea appealed greatly. We spent two weeks in Cape Ann 24 years ago and I was keen to return as an adult. I thought I'd spend time on the beach, read and write a lot, and take advantage of the regular trains into Boston. The weather was gorgeous so I did get lots of beach time but very little writing time as there were so many other things to do. Apparently, some 2,000 words' worth of things to do, thus this is a long read.

When I first started to look into the speciality coffee possibilities for my trip to Massachusetts a few months ago, about the only place outside the Boston area that I found was Little Wolf Coffee, a cafe–roastery in the small, historic town of Ipswich. There was a nice Sprudge article a few months ago about Little Wolf's awesome wolf-themed packaging and branding — which was a big draw for me both as a fan of Wolverhampton Wanderers (AKA Wolves) and in terms of the design.

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you may know that I'm currently on holiday with my family in Massachusetts. We're staying at a beach house near Gloucester on Cape Ann, about 40 miles northeast of Boston. To the best of my knowledge, the only speciality coffee on Cape Ann is that which I am making in our rental house (I brought some coffee from Catalyst and Five Elephant with me), although there is a coffee shop and roastery I'm looking forward to checking out in Ipswich.