There are six American states burdened with the name New England.
Maine, the largest, is almost exactly the same size as Ireland. Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont are each the size of Munster, more or less, while tiny Rhode Island, America’s smallest state, is the size of Co Clare.
Nowhere else in America has as many buildings that were constructed before 1800. These clapboard houses are decorated in fashionable shades of grey, custard, pink, and brick red. They are familiar from TV and film, and a trained eye will quickly learn the subtle differences from region to region.
Coastal position
Four of the six New England states enjoy a coastal position, and the most unspoilt of these is Maine, with 3,500km of coastline spilling northwards to the Canadian border. The contours of the mountains of Maine mean all the roads go north to south, so travelling east to west is an adventure. Stephen King’s novels about the state are misleading. It is a friendly and slow-paced place and worth a visit on its own.
A step inland, New Hampshire is a favourite with school ski trips, with well-fitted resorts and slopes named for its animal life. Tax-free shopping has also turned it into a day trip favourite.
For the best maple syrup, go to unpretentious Vermont, where their purity laws mean no additives. The making of maple syrup is a science; 40 gallons of sap go to make one gallon of maple syrup.
Start point
Boston is the natural arrival and departure point for the region, with daily flights from Aer Lingus and Delta, and another Aer Lingus daily flight to Hartford, Connecticut; inviting those who would like to complete a circuit.
An Irish visitor to Boston tends to be received with a great amount of ceremony. Having established “which county man are you,” an elaborate process of triangulation begins until some distant relative, emigre priest, or other connection is found, and the real exploration can begin. National stereotypes are so ingrained that they are never fully overcome until a verse of the Boston Burglar has been sung.
While the Greater Boston area is big; covering over 1000 square miles, little Boston is still intact amidst it all - an elegant 18th-century town with a waterfront and 24 neighbourhoods unevenly fitted together.
It is one of the only cities where you can commute from the airport to the city by water. The metro, as a gesture to its sulky inferiority in the face of such competition, is free in one direction.
There are splendid hotels, restaurants, fish dining opportunities, and bars, including nests of Irish bars. Some of these taverns claim great antiquity, to tea party days, and you can join amazing conversation with people who speak like Mayor Quimby in The Simpsons; but only if those distracting screens showing simultaneous sporting events are muted.
Beyond Boston
Boston gets 17 million visitors a year, and anyone who finds themselves there with a long weekend to spare should venture out into New England.
Eoghan enjoyed his time spent in the historic town of Northampton, Massachusetts / Eoghan Corry
Road access is excellent and the names of the places that pop-up on the sign posts are hauntingly familiar. Haunting, literally, in the case of Salem, where you would find a visitor industry built on witch-hunting. And, biggest surprise of all, a statue of Father Mathew from Tipperary, whose zeal to hunt another demon extended to these parts.
Inland Massachusetts has a network of market and academic towns, buzzing with old stories and modern student life. In Northampton in 1805, a crowd of 15,000 gathered to watch the executions of two Irishmen convicted of murder: Dominic Daley, 34, and James Halligan, 27. A plaque commemorates their judicial lynching when being Irish was anything but fashionable here.
A nearby art gallery parades the collection of one of the high-end colleges found between New York and Boston, Brown. The original Ivy League colleges are all here, spreadeagled around the provinces. Yale is in New Haven. An enthusiastic scholar explained how the obscure donor had died before he got the news his surname was to be immortalised with the name of one of the world’s most famous universities.
Kennedy connection
Boston’s greatest politician is also Ireland’s, so you will be guaranteed a welcome at the John F Kennedy Library. The scale of his achievement can be appreciated in 12 permanent galleries, starting with Young Jack and finishing with JFK’s Berlin wall speech and visit to Wexford, lumped together, like the climax they were, to a great career.
To find more of Kennedy, visit the family home in Hyannis. The 70 mile drive to Cape Cod passes horrendous development and exquisite charm in rapid succession. The great Eric Newby, who cycled around Ireland before it was fashionable, once wrote, “just like old England, the people of New England take simple, barbarous pleasure in ruining their coasts.”
Cape Cod has 27,000ac of dunes, extending north along the shore as far as Provincetown, where the pilgrim fathers first anchored and which is now an internationally renowned capital of pride.
The Northamption Hotel is located in Northampton, Massachusetts / Eoghan Corry
From Cape Cod, an island in all but name, you can visit real islands like Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, familiar from the movies, and although hopelessly overdeveloped, still retaining some of their sea shanty charm, cobbled streets shaded by old elms, white elderberry blossom and pink wild roses in summer.
New Bedford has the finest whaling museum in the world, and occasionally pays tribute to other seafaring adventures such as the rescue of the Fenians from Fremantle on board the Catalpa in 1876.
The Seaman’s Bethel has a plaque to commemorate the pew of Moby Dick creator Herman Melville. Another plaque on the wall intriguingly commemorates the victim of a real life event that inspired the world’s most famous whaling novel. They filmed Moby Dick the movie in Youghal - the Newport of east Cork.
JFK’s wedding to Jackie took place in Newport, on the coast of America’s smallest state, Rhode Island. Here, wood board charm meets outrageous ostentation, sandy beaches, little jetties, anchorages and entrenched wealth. As state tourism director Mark Brodeur declares, it is the only remaining wooden city in the USA.
Gilded architecture
Old sea captain houses line the streets. A sailing museum, which opened in May 2022, pays tribute to the America’s Cup, including Ireland’s unsuccessful bid to win it in the 1890s.
On Ocean Drive and Bellevue Avenue are the houses and palaces of the American rajas from what is called the Gilded Age, when lots of money was being made and Newport was the place to parade it.
One of the grandees had seven houses for his seven mistresses. Most visited of the show houses is The Breakers, built for Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1895. The Elms is modelled on Chateau d’Asniéres near Paris, built for a Philadelphia coal magnate.
For his visit to Boston, Eoghan stayed in the Marriot Copley Place / Eoghan Corry
George Berkeley, from Kilkenny, wrote to his friend Thomas Prior from Laois, that Newport “exhibited some of the softest rural and grandest ocean scenery in the world.” That was in 1731, before the show houses had been built. Glad to see nothing has changed.
Accommodation
You will want to budget €300 per night while staying in Boston or Newport, Rhode Island. For rural New England, budget around half that (€150). Airbnb, in this region, is often a less-expensive alternative.
The Marriot Copley Place in Boston, Hotel Northamption (in Northampton, Massachusetts), The Heritage Hotel in Southbury (Conneticut), Hotel Marcel in Newhaven (Conneticut), Ocean House in Newport and Newport Hotel (also in Newport, Rhode Island) all come highly recommended.
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There are six American states burdened with the name New England.
Maine, the largest, is almost exactly the same size as Ireland. Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont are each the size of Munster, more or less, while tiny Rhode Island, America’s smallest state, is the size of Co Clare.
Nowhere else in America has as many buildings that were constructed before 1800. These clapboard houses are decorated in fashionable shades of grey, custard, pink, and brick red. They are familiar from TV and film, and a trained eye will quickly learn the subtle differences from region to region.
Coastal position
Four of the six New England states enjoy a coastal position, and the most unspoilt of these is Maine, with 3,500km of coastline spilling northwards to the Canadian border. The contours of the mountains of Maine mean all the roads go north to south, so travelling east to west is an adventure. Stephen King’s novels about the state are misleading. It is a friendly and slow-paced place and worth a visit on its own.
A step inland, New Hampshire is a favourite with school ski trips, with well-fitted resorts and slopes named for its animal life. Tax-free shopping has also turned it into a day trip favourite.
For the best maple syrup, go to unpretentious Vermont, where their purity laws mean no additives. The making of maple syrup is a science; 40 gallons of sap go to make one gallon of maple syrup.
Start point
Boston is the natural arrival and departure point for the region, with daily flights from Aer Lingus and Delta, and another Aer Lingus daily flight to Hartford, Connecticut; inviting those who would like to complete a circuit.
An Irish visitor to Boston tends to be received with a great amount of ceremony. Having established “which county man are you,” an elaborate process of triangulation begins until some distant relative, emigre priest, or other connection is found, and the real exploration can begin. National stereotypes are so ingrained that they are never fully overcome until a verse of the Boston Burglar has been sung.
While the Greater Boston area is big; covering over 1000 square miles, little Boston is still intact amidst it all - an elegant 18th-century town with a waterfront and 24 neighbourhoods unevenly fitted together.
It is one of the only cities where you can commute from the airport to the city by water. The metro, as a gesture to its sulky inferiority in the face of such competition, is free in one direction.
There are splendid hotels, restaurants, fish dining opportunities, and bars, including nests of Irish bars. Some of these taverns claim great antiquity, to tea party days, and you can join amazing conversation with people who speak like Mayor Quimby in The Simpsons; but only if those distracting screens showing simultaneous sporting events are muted.
Beyond Boston
Boston gets 17 million visitors a year, and anyone who finds themselves there with a long weekend to spare should venture out into New England.
Eoghan enjoyed his time spent in the historic town of Northampton, Massachusetts / Eoghan Corry
Road access is excellent and the names of the places that pop-up on the sign posts are hauntingly familiar. Haunting, literally, in the case of Salem, where you would find a visitor industry built on witch-hunting. And, biggest surprise of all, a statue of Father Mathew from Tipperary, whose zeal to hunt another demon extended to these parts.
Inland Massachusetts has a network of market and academic towns, buzzing with old stories and modern student life. In Northampton in 1805, a crowd of 15,000 gathered to watch the executions of two Irishmen convicted of murder: Dominic Daley, 34, and James Halligan, 27. A plaque commemorates their judicial lynching when being Irish was anything but fashionable here.
A nearby art gallery parades the collection of one of the high-end colleges found between New York and Boston, Brown. The original Ivy League colleges are all here, spreadeagled around the provinces. Yale is in New Haven. An enthusiastic scholar explained how the obscure donor had died before he got the news his surname was to be immortalised with the name of one of the world’s most famous universities.
Kennedy connection
Boston’s greatest politician is also Ireland’s, so you will be guaranteed a welcome at the John F Kennedy Library. The scale of his achievement can be appreciated in 12 permanent galleries, starting with Young Jack and finishing with JFK’s Berlin wall speech and visit to Wexford, lumped together, like the climax they were, to a great career.
To find more of Kennedy, visit the family home in Hyannis. The 70 mile drive to Cape Cod passes horrendous development and exquisite charm in rapid succession. The great Eric Newby, who cycled around Ireland before it was fashionable, once wrote, “just like old England, the people of New England take simple, barbarous pleasure in ruining their coasts.”
Cape Cod has 27,000ac of dunes, extending north along the shore as far as Provincetown, where the pilgrim fathers first anchored and which is now an internationally renowned capital of pride.
The Northamption Hotel is located in Northampton, Massachusetts / Eoghan Corry
From Cape Cod, an island in all but name, you can visit real islands like Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, familiar from the movies, and although hopelessly overdeveloped, still retaining some of their sea shanty charm, cobbled streets shaded by old elms, white elderberry blossom and pink wild roses in summer.
New Bedford has the finest whaling museum in the world, and occasionally pays tribute to other seafaring adventures such as the rescue of the Fenians from Fremantle on board the Catalpa in 1876.
The Seaman’s Bethel has a plaque to commemorate the pew of Moby Dick creator Herman Melville. Another plaque on the wall intriguingly commemorates the victim of a real life event that inspired the world’s most famous whaling novel. They filmed Moby Dick the movie in Youghal - the Newport of east Cork.
JFK’s wedding to Jackie took place in Newport, on the coast of America’s smallest state, Rhode Island. Here, wood board charm meets outrageous ostentation, sandy beaches, little jetties, anchorages and entrenched wealth. As state tourism director Mark Brodeur declares, it is the only remaining wooden city in the USA.
Gilded architecture
Old sea captain houses line the streets. A sailing museum, which opened in May 2022, pays tribute to the America’s Cup, including Ireland’s unsuccessful bid to win it in the 1890s.
On Ocean Drive and Bellevue Avenue are the houses and palaces of the American rajas from what is called the Gilded Age, when lots of money was being made and Newport was the place to parade it.
One of the grandees had seven houses for his seven mistresses. Most visited of the show houses is The Breakers, built for Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1895. The Elms is modelled on Chateau d’Asniéres near Paris, built for a Philadelphia coal magnate.
For his visit to Boston, Eoghan stayed in the Marriot Copley Place / Eoghan Corry
George Berkeley, from Kilkenny, wrote to his friend Thomas Prior from Laois, that Newport “exhibited some of the softest rural and grandest ocean scenery in the world.” That was in 1731, before the show houses had been built. Glad to see nothing has changed.
Accommodation
You will want to budget €300 per night while staying in Boston or Newport, Rhode Island. For rural New England, budget around half that (€150). Airbnb, in this region, is often a less-expensive alternative.
The Marriot Copley Place in Boston, Hotel Northamption (in Northampton, Massachusetts), The Heritage Hotel in Southbury (Conneticut), Hotel Marcel in Newhaven (Conneticut), Ocean House in Newport and Newport Hotel (also in Newport, Rhode Island) all come highly recommended.
Read more
Memoir: The road less travelled
Tennessee road trip from Graceland to Dollywood
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