From The Sunday Times

March 15, 2009

North Carolina: the USA’s New South

Trendy cities, millionaire’s mansions, Highland Games, mighty fine pubs: the Blue Ridge Mountains is full of surprises (Super Stock) Stephen Amidon We’d been speaking with the two men for several minutes before anyone mentioned their great dane’s pink toenail polish. Its owners were very much a couple. One carried the Sunday New York Times; the other wore a cravat. We’d stopped to ask them if they knew a good place to eat, as the surrounding neighbourhood contained a dizzying array of restaurants, including a Cajun place with a bloody-mary bar, a bistro that featured “French comfort food” and a likely-looking Thai establishment. “Why is your dog wearing pink nail polish?” one of my nine-year-old twin daughters finally asked. “Well, we tried magenta,” the man with the cravat deadpanned, “but it just wasn’t him.” No, we were not in Greenwich Village or San Francisco, but rather in Asheville, North Carolina, nestled in the heart of Appalachia. And we’d arrived just in time. After two days in Dixie, I was beginning to regret my decision to lure my wife, our teenage son and twin daughters on a road trip into the South. Although I’d promised them an encounter with a unique part of America, so far we’d seen mostly strip malls, corporate headquarters and McMansions. The new South, I was beginning to fear, was no different from the rest of America. Then we entered the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina, and it soon became clear that we had arrived in a place unlike any other in the United States. Asheville is a case in point. Although the darkly wooded hills surrounding it were full of Baptist churches, barbecue shacks and billboards threatening eternal damnation, the city itself (pop 72,000) proved to be an oasis of stylish liberalism with a distinctly Southern accent. In addition to a diverse spread of restaurants, Asheville’s narrow streets offer an eco-chic boutique, a sustainable-clothing warehouse and a selection of pubs that would not be out of place in a Gloucestershire village: Jack of the Wood, the Green Man and the Thirsty Monk were all within a block of one another. Arriving here, you feel you’ve discovered something increasingly rare in homogeneous America: a regional city with a personality all its own. We had begun to understand we’d left striving, modern Dixie behind earlier in the day, as we followed fog-shrouded Route 74 out of prosperous but bland Charlotte. Our first stop was Chimney Rock, a stunning formation rising from the surrounding forest. On approach, it looks less like a chimney than a particularly obdurate mushroom. After lunching on barbecue ribs beside a turbulent little river that had only a week earlier washed away some picnic tables from our terrace, we tackled the surprisingly gentle 300ft climb up to the summit. The rock’s naked promontory boasts views of surrounding Appalachia that are rumoured to range up to 75 miles, though our vista was considerably less due to encroaching thunderclouds. The hiking trails that vein the park below are well worth the effort, particularly the Hickory Nut Falls route, which leads to one of the East Coast’s more beautiful waterfalls. Next came the Biltmore House, the ancestral seat of the Vanderbilt dynasty and the largest private home in America. Situated just south of Asheville, it was built by George Washington Vanderbilt, grandson of the shipping magnate Cornelius “the Commodore” Vanderbilt, America’s first great robber baron. George was a sensitive soul who lacked his forebear’s cutthroat business acumen and decided instead to devote his life (and redoubtable fortune) to the arts. The house he built, which was officially opened on Christmas Eve, 1895, is set on 8,000 acres of rich Southern backwoods, and the 175,000 sq ft structure appears to have been transplanted in its entirety from the Loire Valley. The basement is the house’s most interesting floor, because here you get a sense of what makes Biltmore distinctly American (the other floors being a peculiarly European mishmash of Flemish tapestries, Chippendale furniture and Renoir paintings). There is one of the nation’s oldest bowling alleys, an 1890s “state-of-the-art fitness room” and some of the first indoor toilets to hit the South. There are five distinct gardens surrounding the house, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (best known for planning Central Park), and they’re all stunning. There is also a working winery and a model farm. After spending the night in Asheville, we went to Black Mountain, a few miles east of the city. Home of a famous school of American poetry, it proved a quaint village of shops, beautiful homes and interesting-looking people — the sort of place you want to move to immediately, but are ready to leave after an hour. Finally, we joined the Blue Ridge Parkway, one of America’s most beautiful roads. Running nearly 500 miles from the southwestern tip of North Carolina into central Virginia, the two-lane highway, built by the National Park Service in the 1930s, offers a welcome escape from the strip malls, billboards and building plots that now clutter many Southern roads. Driving along the parkway, which is shrouded by trees and absent of lorries, it’s easy to imagine for long stretches that you have left the modern world altogether. The only stops are rather primitive picnic areas and occasional heritage sites such as the Folk Art Center, which is both a museum and a store selling the latest contemporary Southern arts and crafts. Anyone expecting to be able to purchase crudely whittled items from artisans who look like extras from Deliverance will be disappointed, but the jewellery, cutlery and furniture on sale is truly different from (and generally a lot better than) what you’ll find in Knightsbridge or New York boutiques. The only problem with the Blue Ridge Parkway is its tendency to sporadic closure due to weather-related incidents — on the day we drove it, we were routed onto adjoining country roads for about 20 miles to avoid a rockslide. We took another side trip to Grandfather Mountain, home of July’s annual Highland Games, where descendants of the region’s many Scottish immigrants gather. When the kilted aren’t around, the park’s main attraction is the Mile High Swinging Bridge. Death-wishers will be disappointed to discover that it is neither high (it’s only 80ft above a ravine) nor swinging, though the views it affords are spectacular. We finally left the Blue Ridge Parkway at Fancy Gap, just before the Virginia border. We were all too soon among the 16-wheel trucks, factory-outlet shops and fast-food restaurants. Clearly, our detour into a unique slice of the South was over.