Asheville Supercar Getaway

Three nights at Asheville with two supercar driving days, based at a resort on the grounds of a castle estate.

The trip is built around fall colour, which is the single best reason to drive in this part of North Carolina: the southern Appalachians hold more hardwood species than almost anywhere in the temperate world and the colour runs through October at different altitudes. It opens with a cocktail hour and Spanish tapas at an Asheville institution.

The first driving day goes into Pisgah National Forest, which runs to over five hundred thousand acres of hardwood with mile-high peaks, whitewater rivers and waterfalls in it, with a light lunch and a run on through the misty Blue Ridge, and the resort spa in the afternoon. The second takes a different section of Pisgah and the Blue Ridge Parkway above the canopy, with the two days together covering around two hundred and fifty miles.

Access to a rotating fleet of current supercars for the two driving days is included, along with three nights at the resort, the cocktail hour and the dining, the guides and concierge support, a chauffeured arrival and a farewell breakfast; flights and spa treatments are not. Four days in the first half of October is the point of this one, and those dates book out a long way ahead across the whole region. The colour is weather dependent, as it always is, and a wet autumn brings it down early. The castle estate itself is the best known house in the state and worth the final morning the schedule leaves for it.