I don't want to change the world but I am looking for New England

Picture: Massachusetts Office Of Travel & Tourism

The news this week that the United States will finally open itself up to fully vaccinated travellers from the UK and Europe from 8 November means that, were I able to, I could return to the one country I’ve visited more than any other over the last three decades.

In fact, I’ve lost count of how often I’ve crossed the Atlantic since my maiden trip, to the West Coast in 1992. Since then I’ve been back countless times for work and pleasure, and even lived in Silicon Valley for a couple of years. California has been my main destination but I’ve progressively seen New York whenever I’ve been able to, and more recently have had a series of holidays in Florida, a state I’d hitherto avoided in the mistaken belief that it was just a giant theme park. 

In fact I can proudly boast to have visited 22 of the 50 states in the Union (eight alone on my 2,400-mile drive along Route 66). That, though, does leave 28 as-yet untouched. Some offer little appeal: the barren northern states, mainly, including both Dakotas, Nebraska (despite its Springsteen connection), Wyoming and Idaho. Basically, anywhere with nuclear missile silos. But there are still plenty of places with virgin appeal to me (and that’s not a plug for Mr. Branson’s airline to offer me carriage). Hawaii is one, largely out of the curiosity of seeing an American state that’s closer to Asia than its parent nation, and to experience a “tropical Pacific paradise™” with all the trappings and conveniences of the economy it is anchored to (drive-throughs, chain motels and all the other tropes that have made the US such an effortless destination).

Massachusetts State House, Boston
Picture: Tim Grafft/MOTT

But if there’s one place I really should visit, it’s New England, that collection of states so named by the British explorer John Smith in 1616 after he’d scoped out what is now Massachusetts. Four years later the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, unimaginatively named after the Devon city from which they’d come, and promptly started settling there. What I have seen of Massachusetts (and I’ll admit, Murder She Wrote is my principle source) does look remarkably like parts of south Devon, so perhaps some forgiveness can be afforded the colonials for their lack of invention when naming their new home, but it would be just the start of a trail of colonies spreading west that will forever be connected to England by name, with place names like Portsmouth, Bristol, Bath, Andover, Manchester and Newbury just in New England alone.

Sadly, the opening up of US travel next month means that arguably the primary reason to visit New England - its “fall” autumnal colours - will be ending, but that doesn’t mean that Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire (yep, another shocker for originality), Maine and the micro-state of Rhode Island are not attractive at any other time of year. Like it’s namesake, New England has become a byword for rustic charm, a cliche I know, especially as it’s a much a region of modern America as anywhere else. There is also more to it than leafy photo opportunities, seafood restaurants and villages that look like they were created just to provide backdrops for ‘country cottage’ furniture catalogues. 

For a country often mocked (usually by us Brits) for lacking history - well, any history created before its indigenous people were so rudely displaced by Europeans… - New England boasts some of the most interesting historic attractions in America. No surprise as, arguably, the nation’s birthplace. Boston is the birthplace of American independence and at one point the country’s biggest city. It is, however, arguably one of America’s most attractive ‘pick’n’mix’ regions to explore by road, that great American tradition.

Critics of American culture might argue that dating back to ‘just’ 1492 doesn’t give it any right to history, but New England provides more than most, whether the tourist is looking to savour the Ivy League college towns, walk in Mark Twain’s footsteps, or explore dramatic, windswept beaches and coves that bear more than an uncanny resemblance to those in the South Hams of Devon. And, yes, there’s a Dartmouth, too.

Picture: Tim Grafft/MOTT

I suppose it’s this perceived lack of modernity that is the attraction, though this is a relative term. It’s far from a picturesque backwater. Boston, for example, is one of America’s most vibrant financial services centres, while the region is home to high tech industries, major defence contractors and healthcare corporations, contributing to a GDP of more than $1 trillion for New England as a whole.

Like everywhere else in the comprehensively curated United States, New England has plenty to offer the tourist, be it Boston’s harbour and the location of that teacup-rattling contretemps that launched the Revolution, but also all the fascinating nods to the Europe that uprising was meant to free itself from.

But perhaps the other appeal is that it seems to offer a gentler version of the United States. I’m sure it’s no different to anywhere else I’ve been in the country, which means I’ve probably succumbed to intoxicating marketing. If, though, that simply means that the appeal is a tree-lined, more liberal part of America, full of cosy guest houses and smalltown country grocery stores selling local produce, that will do me just fine.