Experience the best of Golden Isles

The Golden Isles are a group of barrier islands off the coast of southern Georgia, made up of St Simons Island, Sea Island, Little St Simons Island and Jekyll Island, with the old port of Brunswick on the mainland. Live oaks hung with Spanish moss shade the roads, and wide salt marshes, the Marshes of Glynn of Sidney Lanier's poem, run between the islands and the coast. Causeways link St Simons and Jekyll to Brunswick.

On St Simons a lighthouse of 1872 rises above the village, and Fort Frederica National Monument preserves the ruins of a British fort and town of the 1730s. Jekyll Island was a winter retreat of American millionaires in the late nineteenth century, and its clubhouse and cottages survive as a historic district. Driftwood Beach is a shore strewn with bleached fallen trees, and a turtle centre cares for injured sea turtles.

The Georgia coast supplies the table with wild shrimp, blue crab and oysters, served as shrimp and grits or in a Lowcountry boil. Beaches are warm for much of the year, and the shoulder seasons are mild.