Joys of Georgia

The Atlantic seaboard of Florida and the Carolinas has been sullied by development, but Georgia's remains a "bewitching backwater", says Brian Schofield in the Sunday Times. And for that, we should probably thank its "tumultuous history". With white slave-owners driven to absenteeism by the "inhospitable" local conditions, a unique and resilient African-American culture developed in the vacuum. The locals "still battle to care for their culture and wild places".

On Cumberland Island, you can stay in an elegant hotel built by the Carnegies a century ago. The Atlantic beach is deserted, "wild horses play beneath hanging oaks, and armadillos snuffle at the doorways of the clapboard cottages".

The island's dense coastal forest is "a magical, unearthly place", home to boar, spoonbills and pelicans. Fly to Savannah with Delta Airlines (0845 600 0950) from £440. ·