Atlantic Explorer

Fourteen nights down the Atlantic coast from Charleston to Miami Beach, through the old South before Florida starts. Flights, car and hotels are arranged together from the UK with a road book for the driving.

Three nights in Charleston begin it, with the City Market and the live oaks and camellias of the Magnolia Plantation. Two nights in Savannah follow, a city of squares and Spanish moss where Leopold’s has been selling ice cream since 1919. Then two nights on the Golden Isles of Georgia, four barrier islands with their own characters: St Simons, Sea Island, Jekyll Island and Little St Simons.

Florida starts at St Augustine, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the country, and the route then runs down past Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center to Palm Beach. The Overseas Highway carries you out to two nights in Key West, and three nights at Miami Beach close the trip, with the Art Deco district, Little Havana and the Wynwood murals.

The operator describes this as a thousand miles of Atlantic coastline, and their own daily figures put it nearer 955. Five of the seven stops run to two nights or three. Worth knowing that the Kennedy Space Center sits on a day that also involves a long drive, so it may be worth asking for an extra night there. The itinerary is bespoke, with nights addable and stops removable, and departures arranged around your dates. It suits anyone who wants the antebellum South and the Keys in the same fortnight, and would rather start somewhere with better food than Orlando.