GETTING THERE
The town is all clapboard houses with stoops, welcoming locals and coffee shops and antiques stores in which to while away the time. Hardly a hub of activity, but an ideal spot to take in the gorgeous landscape, which includes the Catskill Mountains — of Dirty Dancing fame — across the water.
As the scenery suggests, this part FLY British Airways Heathrow to JFK www.ba.com DRIVE: Manhattan to Cold Spring — approx one-hour drive; Hyde Park to Stockbridge — approx two-hour drive; Stockbridge to Manhattan — approx 2.5 hour drive STAY: of the Hudson is a choice destination for cyclists, hikers, watersports lovers and wildlife-spotters, not least at Bear Mountain State Park.
Keen, however, to avoid the peak season summer camp crowds, we headed further upstate, towards Hyde Park, a place, it transpired, on a par with its namesake in London, if with a slightly different history.
Back in the days of Edith Wharton and Henry James, the Hudson was lined with grand estates, home to the crème de la crème of the East Coast upper-classes.
Among them were the Roosevelts, and Hyde Park — a grand colonial house set in seemingly infinite greenery — was the lifelong home of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Given its startling resemblance to the actual White House, it’s easy to see how Roosevelt’s political ambitions fermented there.
Roosevelt, who took America out of the Depression and into the Second World War, played and hunted at Hyde Park as a child, brought his indomitable wife Eleanor there and allegedly entertained his mistress in the same residence, later using it as a refuge from Washington DC. Remarkably, though, in all his time in office, he never once carried the local vote.
Aside from the stunning views, it’s a fascinating glimpse into how the early American upper classes emulated and simultaneously differentiated themselves from European society, and also