Ultimate East Coast

Sixteen hundred miles down the Atlantic coast over three weeks, New York to Miami Beach. Flights, car and hotels are arranged together from the UK with a road book for the driving.

The first eight nights are cities and no car: four in New York, two in Philadelphia and two in Washington, reached by train rather than on the interstate, which is the sensible way to do that stretch. The car is collected leaving Washington, and the road trip proper starts in Virginia at Williamsburg, where the Colonial Parkway runs between Jamestown and Yorktown past the James River plantations.

Then the coast takes over. Highway 12 threads the Outer Banks on a chain of barrier islands and bridges, past Kitty Hawk where the Wright brothers got off the ground and the wild horses that still run the northern beaches. Wilmington follows, then two nights in Charleston for the City Market and the Magnolia Plantation, and two in Savannah, where Leopold’s has been making ice cream since 1919. Amelia Island marks the Florida line, then two nights in Orlando and three at Miami Beach to finish.

Eleven stops over twenty-one nights, seven of them lasting two nights or more. An alternative route is offered through Amish country, Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry if history interests you more than beaches. The itinerary is bespoke, with nights addable and stops removable, and departures arranged around your dates. It suits anyone who wants the whole eastern seaboard in one go, from a Manhattan hotel to a South Beach one, and would rather let the train handle the cities and the car handle the coast.