Having lived in the north-east of the US for a dozen years, I’ll admit I’m an autumn-colours junkie. There is nothing quite like vibrant red, gold and yellow foliage against a China-blue sky ... like natural fireworks celebrating autumn’s harvest cornucopia.
Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut all offer marvellous autumn vistas but my personal favourite is Vermont.
No doubt this is because Vermont has forged environmental protection laws to preserve agricultural and forest land, ban billboards and regulate development. The happy result is a rolling landscape dotted with villages and red-barned dairy farms interspersed with a patchwork of fiery-hued hillsides.
It doesn’t hurt that Vermont produces a quarter of the maple syrup in the US, since maple trees are responsible for some of the most vibrant autumn colours.
Many autumn-colour first-timers make the mistake of trying to see the colours across New England and hit all the famous towns where – surprise, surprise – they bump into all the other colour-seeking tourists. The result: exhaustion, frustration at overcrowded sites and even missing the colours altogether if a prearranged route doesn’t coincide with the autumn weather.