Outer Banks

The Outer Banks are a thin chain of barrier islands with well over 100 miles of open Atlantic sand, and the beach is the reason almost everyone comes. In summer the sea warms to about 26°C, and swimming is comfortable from June to September. Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk and Nags Head have the classic rows of beach houses and lifeguarded stretches. Corolla and Duck in the north are quieter and more residential. The beaches of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, around Rodanthe, Buxton and Ocracoke, are undeveloped, with dunes behind them and often nobody in sight.

This is surf beach, not lagoon. Waves and rip currents are a real hazard, so swimmers should stay near lifeguard stands and watch the flags. Families with small children often use the calm, shallow sound side for paddling. There is no sheltered cove or clear turquoise water anywhere, and outside summer the sea is too cold for most people.

Eating here means seafood, kept simple. The most typical meals are steamed shrimp, soft-shell crab in season, local tuna and flounder, and fried baskets with hushpuppies. You eat them in casual dockside places and seafood shacks along the beach road, or buy fresh fish at the markets near the harbours of Wanchese and Hatteras and cook it in a rental house. Nags Head and Duck have more ambitious restaurants, and breakfast doughnut shops are a beach ritual. Away from the seafood, the choice is mostly burgers, pizza and tourist fare. There is little fine dining and almost nothing from other cuisines, so this is a place for pleasant meals rather than a food trip.

Two moments in American history happened here. On the dunes at Kill Devil Hills, the Wright Brothers National Memorial marks the first powered flight of 1903, with a granite monument and the reconstructed camp. On Roanoke Island, Fort Raleigh recalls the English colony of the 1580s that vanished, the Lost Colony. Nearby, the waterfront village of Manteo has the Elizabethan Gardens and a heritage park.

The lighthouses are the other landmarks: Currituck Beach in red brick, black-and-white Bodie Island, and the spiral-striped Cape Hatteras, which was moved inland in one piece. In Hatteras village, a museum tells the story of the shipwrecks on this coast. In Corolla, the Whalehead is a 1920s hunting lodge in Art Nouveau style, restored as a house museum beside the sound. Each sight is worth a morning, but there are few of them and they are far apart.

This is a rental-house and early-bed kind of coast. Going out means a sunset drink on a sound-side deck, a beach bar or brewery taproom along the bypass in Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head, or a seafood bar where the crowd stays on after dinner. A few places stay lively on summer weekends, but there are almost no clubs, and most evenings end on the porch of the house you rented. Outside summer, things go quieter still.

The landscape is low and open, made of dunes, salt marsh, maritime forest and two kinds of water: the surf of the open ocean and the wide, shallow sounds behind the islands. At Jockey's Ridge, the East Coast's tallest living sand dunes are a playground for hang-gliding lessons and sunset walks. Wild Spanish mustangs roam the four-wheel-drive beaches north of Corolla. Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore bring huge flocks of migrating birds in autumn and winter, and nesting sea turtles in summer.

On the water, the shallow sounds around Rodanthe, Waves and Avon are among the best flat-water kiteboarding and windsurfing spots in the world. Kayaking in the marshes, surfing at Cape Hatteras and serious offshore sport fishing from Oregon Inlet and Hatteras add to that. There are no hills, and walking means beach strolls and short forest trails.

The best day out is Ocracoke. A free car ferry from Hatteras takes about an hour to reach this island village of sandy lanes, a small harbour and a squat white lighthouse, and it feels more remote than anywhere north of it. From the northern beaches, Edenton is about an hour and a half inland. It is a small colonial town on Albemarle Sound with Georgian houses and a waterfront lighthouse. Elizabeth City has a modest historic downtown on the Pasquotank River. Virginia Beach and Norfolk, with its naval base and museums, are reachable in under two hours when traffic is light. That makes a handful of pleasant outings, none of them a reason to come on its own.

The Outer Banks are a classic American family beach vacation. Several generations rent a big house with a pool for a week, and the days follow an easy rhythm of beach, crab-catching and an evening round of mini-golf. Children love the giant dunes at Jockey's Ridge, the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, the wild-horse tours in Corolla, the lighthouse climbs and the flight memorial at Kill Devil Hills. The shallow sound side is safe for toddlers to splash in, and there are kayak and paddleboard trips for older children.

The ocean itself needs care, because waves and rip currents are strong. There is also no theme park or large attraction, and on rainy days the choice runs out quickly. The towns are relaxed, safe and easy with a car.

You will need a car. A visitor gets around on two parallel roads through the central towns and then a single highway running south down Hatteras Island. There is essentially no public transport, and there are no train links. The towns from Kitty Hawk to Nags Head are close together and good for cycling on the multi-use paths, but getting from the northern beaches at Corolla to Hatteras village takes a couple of hours. On summer Saturdays, when rental weeks change over, traffic on the bridges can back up for hours. Storms sometimes wash sand over the Hatteras road, and Ocracoke can only be reached by ferry. Inside a town, a bicycle and your feet do the rest.

Shopping is beach-town shopping, spread out along the highways. Expect surf and kite shops, big beachwear and souvenir stores, a small outlet centre in Nags Head, and art galleries and craft shops in Duck, Manteo and Ocracoke selling local pottery, decoys and coastal paintings. The boardwalk in Duck and the waterfront in Manteo are the nicest places to browse. There is no luxury shopping and no market worth a visit, and nobody plans a trip around shopping here.

In the summer season this is an expensive coast. Oceanfront houses and hotels are in high demand, many rentals go only by the full week, and restaurant meals cost what they do in prosperous American resort towns. The costs come down when a big group or an extended family shares a house and does its own cooking with fish bought at the docks. Most of the best things are free or cheap, from the beaches and dunes to the national seashore and the ferry to Ocracoke. In late spring and autumn the same houses cost much less, but by then the sea is cooler.

The one real tradition is The Lost Colony. This outdoor drama has been staged on summer nights since 1937 in a waterside theatre on Roanoke Island, telling the story of the vanished settlers on the spot where they lived. Apart from that there are summer bands on bar decks, small concerts in Manteo and a few community festivals. Outside the summer months there is very little to go and see.

There is no bathing tradition and no real spa culture here, just a few day spas and yoga studios in the central towns and in Duck. What the coast does offer is slowness. The days of a beach-house week have no fixed plan, and evenings are spent on a porch listening to the surf. The quiet villages of Hatteras Island and Ocracoke are the place for that most of all, especially in late spring and in autumn when the crowds thin out.