1 to 5 November 2025

It will come as no surprise to you as now committed (and very patient) readers of this blog for over 8 years that Disneyland was not on our list of must see destinations for the remainder of our time in the Land of the Free.

When we arrived in the States we might not have known the Revolutionary War from the Civil War but we did know that the oppression and brutalisation of Black people in the US did not magically end with Lincoln’s emancipation proclaimation in 1863. Very far from it. So we set off along a route that would take us right to the heart of the civil rights trail and deeper into a South where its tales are far more Brothers Grimm than Walt Disney.

Before leaving Virginia, and to honour my heritage, we had a pitstop in Isle of Wight. Union Jacks flying and a red telephone box made us feel very at home in this tiny place established by Puritan colonists.

Heading into North Carolina again, we could instantly see that the State was definitely not all as affluent as Wrightsville and Beaufort on the waterfront but we passed a couple of nights in arty Asheboro

and took a detour to see the historic Pigsah covered bridge. Built in 1911 when transport was still mostly by horse and cart, the roof was designed to protect the one lane wooden bridge from exposure to the elements and increase its longevity. An increase in traffic, however, has long made it redundant.

But our first stop on the civil rights trail proper was Greensboro, a refreshingly calm and compact city that belied the protest movement that put it on the map. We soaked in some lovely Autumn sunshine in the pretty public park surrounded by buildings old and new.

We stopped in at the unassuming but brilliant and free (thanks again Mr Smithson!) local museum, housed in a building formerly used as a hospital by the Confederacy in the Civil War. There we had a lesson in the history and people of the town from its founding to the present day.

It’s final exhibit on democracy seemed very timely with the US Presidential election hurtling towards its conclusion. With hindsight, we no longer perhaps have the same faith in democracy’s promise but that is perhaps for another post!

What we had really come to see here, however, was the site of the launch of a movement to end segregation. Back at the Museum of American History in DC, we had seen a section of the actual lunch counter at which four young Black students had staged a sit-in at the whites only lunch counter of the Greensboro Woolworth’s, sparking protests across the country by 70,000 people and leading eventually to the desegregation of public spaces. Here in Greensboro we got to visit the actual Woolworth’s, now home to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

Led by brilliant guides, one of whom had been around at the time of the sit-ins, the tour was one of the most moving and immersive experiences we’ve had. In a series of maze-like rooms, full of claustrophobic dead-ends designed to replicate the Black experience of segregation, we learnt about life under the Jim Crow laws of the South. We saw the Coca-Cola machine – one side for use by white people costing 5 cents, the other side for use by Black people costing 10 cents. We took the literacy test designed to ensure that African Americans could not vote. We saw photographs from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Street bombing that killed four African American girls, of Emmett Till’s unrecognisable body after his lynching in Mississippi and of smiling white lynchers celebrating Black bodies hung from trees. By the time we got to the lunch counter, the chasm between this State sanctioned violence and discrimination and the peaceful nature of the sit-in movement was impossible not to feel. We both had chills listening to our guide’s first hand account of a defining moment in history that started there in the windowless basement of a Woolworth’s store, so far away from our own experiences and yet so familiar to us from our childhood high streets.

Greensboro is not defined solely by the civil rights protests. Walking its streets we discovered that it is also the home of denim, perhaps not surprising when we remembered all the endless cotton fields we had driven through to get there. The city remains home to the main offices of Wrangler and Lee jeans, even after manufacture has long moved overseas.

And, fun fact about Greensboro, it turns out it is also the birthplace of Vicks’ VapoRub!

To get towards our next stop on the civil rights trail meant a long drive that saw us go through three States in just one day. Starting in North Carolina we drove into South Carolina. It’s fair to say that we preferred south South Carolina to north South Carolina. Charleston this was not. All but abandoned towns full of empty run down houses, gun stores and pawn shops. Gaffney and Kings Mountain maybe not representative but, if they are, you can see why Trump and his rhetoric resonate there. In homage to our Australian road trip we went in search of the Big Peach at Gaffney and then stopped for lunch on the peachy banks of the Savannah River before crossing into a third State, Georgia.

Into Georgia, first impressions felt different. More hills and wide open fields but it was not long before we saw our first confederate flag, jolting us back towards our mission.

But, stopping in Athens, we took a musical interlude from the civil rights trail and instead walked the self guided tour of music history. Around the streets that house theatres and bars where Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong played and where the B52s and REM started out it was clear that music is still big in this town.

There was also no escaping the fact that Athens is a big college town. Driving down Milledge Avenue passed the impossibly grand, classical facades of the sorority houses felt like entering a very different world to the Georgia we had seen outside. In town there were young people wearing University of Georgia sweatshirts like a uniform and the flags of the sports teams flew everywhere. We took a short walk around the campus which was equally classical in its architecture with just one red brick building to remind me of my alma mater!

5 November 2025 was a big day in the US, and one that we will write something about separately, but, whilst we joined the country anxiously waiting for the result, we took solace in nature

and went in search of a creature who had evaded us in the wilds of the national parks so far. We figured that Bear Hollow Zoo, a small wildlife centre caring for animal who can’t be released back into the wild, was perhaps our best chance to see the Black Bears that Shenandoah had promised but not delivered! And it did not disappoint, throwing in an American Alligator and a Bald Eagle for good measure.

We further immersed ourselves in nature at the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia before putting ourselves to bed that night with a determined hope that Kamala had done enough to win the election…