Experience the best of Folly Beach

Folly Beach is a small barrier island town about 13 km south of Charleston, South Carolina, reached by a causeway across the marshes. Its beach is long and sandy, with a pier reaching out over the surf and a main street of surf shops, cafés and bars. Off the island's north-eastern end, the Morris Island Lighthouse, built in 1876, now stands in the sea, and the composer George Gershwin worked on Porgy and Bess in a cottage on the island in 1934.

Charleston's historic district, with the pastel houses of Rainbow Row, the waterfront Battery and cobbled streets, is a short drive. Boats from Charleston's harbour run out to Fort Sumter, the Angel Oak, a live oak several centuries old, stands on nearby Johns Island, and the beaches of Kiawah and Seabrook islands lie to the south-west.

Lowcountry cooking is the food of the area: shrimp and grits, she-crab soup, fresh oysters and a Lowcountry boil of shrimp, sausage, corn and potatoes. Loggerhead sea turtles nest on the beach from May to August. Summer is hot and humid and hurricane season runs from June to November, so spring and autumn are the most comfortable seasons, and winters are mild.