Best of Massachusetts & The Berkshires Self-Drive

Relax with included airport lounge access before a daytime flight brings you to the site of America’s modern foundations – Boston. On arrival, make your way to your luxury hotel. Positioned in the historic Back Bay district just steps from Beacon Hill and the esplanade, Fairmont Copley Plaza has played host to almost every past president since its 1912 opening. Rooms are lavish and the excellent fine dining restaurant is complemented by a cocktail bar and rooftop health club.

Sometimes known as ‘the walking city’, it’s possible to quite literally follow in the footsteps of Boston's storied past. On the Freedom Trail, a two and a half mile route leads you to museums, two-hundred-year-old frigates, 19th-century state houses and meeting houses where the fate of the nation was decided. Elswhere, manicured green spaces abound while crossing over into nearby Cambridge brings you to its intellectual powerhouses. In Harvard, you’ll find a redbrick, leafy campus with excellent museums open to the public and, in MIT, there’s a university leading the way in scientific discovery. There’s also the superb New England Aquarium along with the Museum of Fine Arts where contemporary experiments rub shoulders with European classics.

Today, after collecting your hire car, you’ll make the one-hour drive up the coast to Salem. Look past its infamous 17th century witch trials – immortalised in restored examination rooms and Halloween parades – and you’ll find a relaxed, seaside town still living off its maritime past. Once the centre of America’s clipper-ship trade with the Orient, you’ll find historic wharves lined with 19th century lighthouses and tall-ships best experienced in the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.

Stay: Salem Waterfront Hotel & Suites (Superior)

Next, you’ll make the short drive along the brilliantly named Yankee Division Highway back inland to well-heeled Lexington in the countryside just outside of Boston. This is country club America at its finest with pretty Victorian neighbourhoods and giant lawn-ringed mansions. You’ll also find a revolutionary past, best seen in the Lexington Battle Green where the first shots of that country-defining event were fired. Cemeteries and colonial houses bear further witness to its significant past. This afternoon, continue on to the college town of Amherst where you'll spend the night.

Stay: Inn on Boltwood, Amherst (Superior)

On your sixth day you’ll strike into Massachusetts’ green interior on a two to three hour drive into the heart of the Berkshire Hills. Long the retreat for the elite of Boston and New York, grand estates dot its picturesque undulations of forests and meadows. You’ll stay in the small town of Lenox, at a grand country house host to cosy lounges, roaring fires, an indulgent spa and delicious farm-to-table food.

Stay: Kemble Inn, Lenox (Deluxe)

For your penultimate day, you’ll make the short drive back through the winding countryside to Boston’s international airport. Drop off your hire car and board your overnight flight home, arriving back in the UK on day 9.

Arrive back in the UK after your overnight flight and continue your onward journey home.