This week’s dream: an unspoiled corner of the Sunshine State
Decades of high-rise development have “laid waste” to many of Florida’s “funky old beach towns”, says Richard Grant in The Sunday Telegraph – but not on the Forgotten Coast. This 130 mile-long littoral stretch in the northwest of the state is “Florida as it used to be”. It feels like the Deep South: the pace of life is slow, people talk with southern drawls, and the occasional Confederate flag still flies. “Gracious old mansions abide in the shade of spreading oaks”, and the highways are dotted with bait shops, liquor stores, boatyards and oyster shacks. It is “scruffy” and “sun weathered” – the perfect place to sit on a creaky old verandah and write a crime novel, perhaps, or to just lounge on a beach and commune with pelicans and ghost crabs.
The region reaches its “zenith” in Franklin County, and the old town of Apalachicola. Known locally as Apalach, this place is “a treat”, despite its resolute lack of sophistication. You’re never far from a sculpture of an alligator drinking a cocktail or of a fish wearing sunglasses, and most of the dishes in the restaurants are “at least slightly disappointing” – except for the oysters, that is: oystermen still catch them here in the old-fashioned way, seizing them with huge wooden tongs while standing in small boats. For the very freshest, go to Lynn’s, a little fish shop in the working town of Eastpoint across the bay, where a dozen cost around £6.
Stay at the Gibson Inn, a faded but lovely Victorian hotel, and head out by day to St George Island. Nearby, black bears roam the pine woods, alligators float in the bayous, and dolphins “arch” through the “jade-green” sea. On the island itself, loggerhead sea turtles lay their eggs in the dunes, and the beach of powdery sand must be the most tranquil in the US. Fly with Virgin Atlantic and Delta via Atlanta to Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport in Panama City Beach, from about £550 return (see www.virginatlantic.com).