Looking for a New England: How to have a whale of a time in the American Salcombe

I am told, before I board my tiny, silver plane, that Nantucket looks like a pork chop from the air. In shape, at least.

The island, which lies 30 miles south of the Cape Cod peninsula, is where generations of East Coast Americans have come to summer. Before them, it was home, for more than 12,000 years, to the Wampanoag people, who used cobbles deposited by glacial ice to make tools, and then colonisers from England, who christened their first settlement Sherburne and turned this meat-shaped speck on the map into the whaling capital of the world.

Nantucket is often mentioned in the same breath as other affluent coastal enclaves: nearby Martha’s Vineyard and The Hamptons and ‘The Cape’ (shorthand for Cape Cod). Their British counterparts aren’t necessarily the places that parts of them were named after, but rather Rock in Cornwall, Burnham Market in Norfolk and Salcombe in Devon, all similar places of immense natural beauty, architectural arms races and strained relationships between locals and second-home owners.

Salcombe is my summer poison of choice and I’ve spent hours sitting stationary opposite Stonehenge, being diverted away from the A303 altogether, or on the well-intentioned, but always delayed train service from Paddington to Totnes with disastrously upright seats.

Thankfully, there are more sophisticated ways to get to Nantucket: Tradewind, of tiny silver-plane fame, which flies between, among others, New York and Boston and coastal holiday hotspots; Cape Air; and myriad ferries — some of which take cars, most of which allow dogs.

Occasionally, Nantucket is shrouded in that particular kind of salty sea mist that looks like fine gauze and reveals it to arrivals ever so slowly, like a phantom island. It feels as if, had you travelled on a perfectly clear day, you’d never come across land at all, the map scrubbed clean.

However you choose to arrive, it’s impossible not to notice the uniform houses clad in weathered grey cedar shingle. There have been planning restrictions in place since the 19th century and, when it comes to façades, house owners must choose from a palette of approved colours. There are no white and glass, harsh-angled monstrosities here.

The second thing you’ll probably notice is the fleet of Jeep Wranglers lining the uneven cobblestone streets that were laid in the first half of the 19th century. The descendant of the rugged Second World War Jeep is still a rare sight back in south Devon, where the Suzuki Jimny and ageing Land Rover Defender reign supreme.

White Elephant is Nantucket’s grande dame hotel. It is a 10-minute walk from the harbour and Main Street, with its cluster of shops (including an impressive array of vintage and antique furniture stores) and restaurants, and is where everyone in the know suggests visitors stay.

In 2023, the harbour-side hotel was refurbished to celebrate its centenary year, but it didn’t stray far from its New England roots. Think linen sofas, scalloped lampshades and grass cloth wall coverings in nautical hues, plus rattan cabinets and bobbin chairs. What sets it apart is the breadth of accommodation, from the rooms and suites in the main building to garden cottages, multi-bedroom residences arranged around a pool and more sprawling, contemporary downtown lofts. There is a configuration for almost every stage of life, which means guests return year after year knowing it will suit a growing brood or a different circle of friends.

Residents have access to very solid bicycles that I decided could hold their own in a stand-off with a Jeep and, on our first evening, we pedalled to Steps Beach, a long, unspoilt stretch of sand with little parking that’s famed for its sunset views. It’s accessed by, unsurprisingly, a lot of steps, which cut a line through the dunes, and grey mansions that stand sentry on the bluffside.

In August and September, the gentle waves glow with bioluminescence, but in spring, when we visited, there were only the empty shells of unfortunate horseshoe crabs to marvel at. The 250-million-year-old living fossils — the bright-blue blood of which is highly prized by the medical industry — are commonplace here in April through to June when they gather in shallow, protected waters to mate.

Beach-goers who come across horseshoes that have come a cropper due to strong tides or their own clumsy swimming are encouraged to flip them right-side up. It’s a very different spectacle to the one of children crabbing on Salcombe’s Victoria Quay, but, then again, horseshoe crabs aren’t crabs at all, but relations of spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites (and impossible to fit inside a plastic bucket).

When it comes to food, Nantucket decisively steals a march on Salcombe — and everywhere else on the British coastline. There’s The Proprietors, for elegant small plates and fantastic cocktails, The Nautilus (try the blue crab fried rice if you can get a table) and Topper’s, White Elephant’s sister property The Wauwinet’s restaurant, where, after a long lunch, you can drift into the sitting room for a game of backgammon. At cosy Brotherhood of Thieves, to which we retreated on an overcast day at the urging of Sam, a member of White Elephant’s concierge team, our server confidently claimed its lobster roll is the best on the island. Naturally, we ordered two: one was piping hot and swimming in a rockpool of molten butter; the second was cold, the lobster meat folded through a salad of celery, chives, lemon and mayonnaise. Had we been pushed to eat a third, I don’t think we would have complained.

This year marks the 175th anniversary of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, which D. H. Lawrence branded ‘the greatest book of the sea ever written’. Nantucket is inextricably linked to the great American novel because it serves as the home port of the doomed Pequod. Melville was further inspired by his own experiences as a common sailor and the 1820 sinking of a whaling boat that met its match in the form of an extremely angry, 85ft-long sperm whale.

The skeleton of a smaller specimen hangs from the ceiling of the Nantucket Whaling Museum, a well-curated space that documents four centuries of the island’s maritime and whaling history. The dangerous pursuit of these marine mammals — chiefly for their spermaceti, a semi-liquid substance located in the animal’s head cavities and used to create smokeless candles — peaked in mid 1700s; in 1790, the Nantucket Quakers famously reported that ‘there were no poor people on the island’.

We didn’t see any now-protected whales on our trip, although a particularly chunky seal kept close watch over us on Surfside Beach and plenty of people have reported sightings from the ferry from Hyannis.

I had always assumed great beaches required great drama to be, well, great. In Salcombe, many are bordered by dramatic, Paleozoic cliffs and, behind that, an undulating patchwork of fields. Further abroad, where it’s warmer, pristine sand is often juxtaposed against turquoise seas.

Although there is nothing theatrical about Nantucket’s topography, it quietly dismantled my prejudices. The land sits low against the horizon and is carpeted in sprawling expanses of globally rare sandplain grasslands and cranberry bogs that creep forward to blend seamlessly into the coastal dunes.

It’s a softer and subtler beauty that’s not shaped by spectacle — and it invites you to rest and unwind. I didn’t need to be asked twice.

Carrier can organise seven-night New England itineraries from £6,175 per person. The price includes four nights in a premier double room at Raffles Boston and three nights in a Harborview Room at White Elephant Hotel, Nantucket, plus return economy flights with Virgin Atlantic from London Heathrow (LHR), return domestic flights from Boston to Nantucket Airport with Tradewind, private transfers and airside departure service at LHR.

This feature originally appeared in the July 15, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.