About a 1½ hours’ highly scenic drive from Nashua, Manchester and Concord, and only 40 minutes from Keene gets you to one of the most absorbing shopping treasures in New England, and quite near that is also living history museum The Fort at #4.
The Vermont Country Store itself has a charming family-owned history going back to 1945, but was inspired by its original 1890’s country store where its bottom line still remains to carry items that are highly practical and well-made plus, now, a huge dose of nostalgia. This is where you can get just about anything under the sun, from old fashioned candy (40’s-50’s and earlier) to household problem solvers, to clothing you just can’t find anymore which ranges from “understandably so” fashionwise to things you wish you’d discovered earlier—all the way down the line to things like Tangee lipstick, and for nostalgia sake alone, the infamous Evening in Paris perfume.
They have two locations, the original store in Weston, Vt. (a tad farther than most would want to drive) and the closer-to-us Bellows Falls store known as “The Rockingham Store,” which also has a Grist Mill Museum and a covered bridge.
Their mail order catalog is a hefty little piece, 5″x8″ on newsprint which won’t stop you from hours of fun browsing because everything’s well described, but if you’re here from across country and have a full day to spend, or a local who’d like to make a day of it, a trip to either Vermont Country Store is just flat out worth experiencing because both will treat you to a very scenic drive.
Now, for the inhumanly fast shopper, also worth mentioning is that Daylily Daytrip #2 isn’t far from Bellows Falls, but the living history museum Old Fort No. 4 is just 15 minutes away from the Bellows Falls store. We’re stacking their locations onto this map so you can see what’s where.
Hours: Very schedule-friendly, summer hours (Memorial Day-Oct. 20): 8:30am-8pm daily. Late Fall-Winter (Oct. 21-Mar. 16) from 9am to 7pm daily (until 8pm on Fridays) with Christmas Week from 9am-8pm except Christmas Eve, 9am-4pm (closed Christmas Day).
1292 Rockingham Road, Bellows, VT
(802) 463-2224
Website
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