People walk Duke of Gloucester Street for exercise, some accompanied by their dogs.
My new residence is on the main street of Williamsburg and what a street it is! Not only is it a huge pedestrian-only thoroughfare, it’s almost literally a time machine to what life was like in the 1770s. Hundreds of thousands of tourists come to Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area each year to experience our collective past through living history.
But what I can see from my porch is much more than that. Early in the morning, there are people walking Duke of Gloucester Street for exercise—some accompanied by their dogs (or vice versa, the dogs are walking them!) There are often groups of ladies wearing brightly-colored sneakers walking briskly and talking. There are the William & Mary students who are running in shorts (almost no matter what the weather) with their iPods, zig-zagging through the slower crowds. Duke of Gloucester Street is almost exactly a mile from the Wren Building to the Capital, so it makes a great training ground for would-be marathoners.
There are also the notable regulars—the guy from Youngstown with the two Rottweilers, the St. Bernard puppy named Cooper and the Virginia Tech couple who always dress to show their allegiance. There’s everyone from groups of stroller moms to the guy with the religious T-shirts and straw hat to the after work joggers. You’ll see many people early in the morning enjoying the cooler summer weather, and in the evening, the dwindling dabs of tourists after a long and interesting day.
Besides the dogs, the walkers and the runners, there are all of the features of Colonial Williamsburg’s visitor attractions. A walk with my family usually leads us past carriage rides, and around 5 p.m. there are musket and cannon firings near the Courthouse. You may also find a group playing cricket on Market Square some nights—did you know cricket is a true colonial-era sport? It’s fun to watch them use that flat bat and chase the ball on the grass, and often they’ll play in costumes.
At dusk, that’s when the ghost tours come out. Our house is located at the end of the street where those tours begin and we see and hear them telling tales. How many of them are true? …who could say? Some of the ghost tours go very late, and I see them still out hoping to meet an apparition while I’m headed to bed.
And then it all begins again, first thing in the morning, with the legion of CW operations’ staff, trimming the grass, watering flowers in the gardens and making sure everything is ready for the day. It’s the same street, but it has a different vibe at different times of day.
I’ll never forget my first trip down Duke of Gloucester Street. It was the evening of my husband Dan’s job interview with Colonial Williamsburg, and as we walked down from Merchants Square, I said this: “I wonder if they call this ‘DoG Street’ for short?” and then I answered my own question quickly, “No, probably not, this is a pretty fancy town.” Little did I know, they do, and now we do, too. It’s incredibly fortunate that we are able to call Williamsburg home, and even more so that we have the opportunity to live on DoG Street with our boys. I’m sure we’ll see you out there sometime soon!