Civil War - Onward and downward: After a marvellous 5 days in NY and a most enjoyable train journey south towards Washington, we arrived and spent the day in Baltimore. Aside from the waterfront which is excellent, the capital of Maryland, though quite quaint and pretty is rather uninspiring in comparison to its larger neighbour a half an hours drive south.

I wanted to visit some Civil War battlefield sites – in fact as many as I could get away with before Emily held up the red card! After a night in Baltimore we rented a rather nice Budget Nissan Coupé which we would retain for the forthcoming week and took off for Hagerstown -sandwiched nicely between two northern civil war sites.

Civil War battlefields: The United States takes its civil war battle sites seriously. Not long after the 1861-65 war the Federal government designated all of the battlefields as National Parks which are segregated, protected from development, cared for by National Park Rangers and outstanding.

Shelby Foote, the renowned civil war historian comments in Ken Burnes’ TV series (which I had re-watched before starting our trip) that to really understand the US psyche one needs to understand the Civil War. I had the book of the series with me too and was avidly reading it at every opportunity and over the next four days we visited Antietam and Gettysburg, North West of Washington, and Fredericksburg and Richmond, to the south.

My personal favourite was Antietam (pronounced Anteedum) where a park ranger, Mannie Gentile, brought the story of the battle alive with his descriptions of The Cornfield, The Sunken Road, and Burnsides Bridge, smaller battles that occurred on the same day, and all sufficiently close together to permit ready access.

It has the reputation for being the bloodiest of the battles (with 23,000 casualties in one day), in a war of very bloody battles though all of them make claims of a similar nature. It is interesting to compare the way in which these Parks have been preserved with that of many of England’s equivalent sites, which pale into (cared for) insignificance in comparison. Towton Moor for instance, near Tadcaster in N Yorkshire (close to where I grew up), is said to be the bloodiest battle in the English Civil War (28,000 dead in one day) and is marked merely by a small stone monument.

Our Ranger tour guide, Mannie, was so good that even Emily was inspired, which stimulation (thank goodness) carried us through the next few days making the whole experience so much more enjoyable. Gettysburg was similarly excellent though we toured the site using a CD which we’d bought from the visitors centre. Though not as good as the Antietam experience, I enjoyed visiting locations such as Little Round Top and Pickett’s Charge, about which I’d heard so much.

Washington. Happily surfeited of Civil War battlefields (for now) we moved on to Washington, spending two and a half days in all, mostly walking around the monuments and museums, most of which are free and superb. Our first afternoon was spent at Arlington Cemetery, which overlooks Downtown Washington and the Pentagon across the Potomac river.

More than just rows and rows of soldiers gravestones, dating back to the Civil War, which are impressive enough, there is also JFK’s memorial and the tomb of the unknown soldier, protected by a solitary smartly dress guard who marches exactly 21 paces, clicks to a halt, turns about and returns, before being replaced after half an hour in a very formal changing of the guard for which spectators are requested to stand. The drill has been repeated in its exacting form so precisely that the stones on which they tread bear the darkened marks of their footfalls. The foot clicking, on the halt and about turn was really impressive, all the more so for being synchronised during the guard change over – despite the two soldiers being out of sight of one another. Unlike British Army foot drill, the right leg is swung out and away from the left, and the heels brought together with the very audible and satisfying snap. The sergeant conducting the changeover inspected the oncoming guard’s rifle using manoeuvres that swung and swivelled it around with surprising but self assured speed bourn clearly of extensive practice. The white dress gloves can’t have made it any easier.

 We finished the cemetery off with a brief visit to General Lee’s old home at the top of the hill, Arlington House – which he relinquished along with the land around it, after deciding to side with his State of Virginia rather than the Union.

Subsequent days in Washington saw us walking the length and breadth of the National Mall which extends from Lincoln’s Memorial at one end to the Capitol building at the other, and encompasses the Washington Memorial, a view of the White House off to one side, various war memorials and a plethora of museums, all of which we endeavoured to visit, including the American History, Natural History, Gallery of Art and the Air & Space Museum.

 We also had a guided tour of the Capitol building but the guide was rather uninspiring, in marked contrast to our similar tour around the Virginia Capitol building in Richmond a few days before. Best moments for me were the Vietnam and WWII memorial sites, Lincoln’s Memorial and the National Gallery of Art – the latter of which had an impressing range of exceptionally fine classic paintings in rooms that seemed to go on for ever.

The Congress Library, behind the Capitol was also worth the visit for its exquisite interior decoration; our one regret was not arriving in time to visit the National Archive building where copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are on display.

Driving: Thankfully both we and our Nissan Altima Coupe survived the week intact. It took a while to get used to the initially confusing road sign and numbering system, the ability to turn right on a red light and the habitual lethargic pace of traffic on most of the roads.

Only once during the week did I regret not ticking the GPS rental option - when we looked for and unfortunately, and inexplicably, couldn’t find Harpers Ferry, despite repeated frustrating attempts. Fuel in the USA is an amazing 50p per litre but our 2.5litre V6 automatic made every attempt to guzzle as much fuel as it could even at the slow moving pace, often due to the air conditioning necessitated by the 80 degree Fahrenheit temperatures. Washington was a nightmare of one way streets and poor directions.  We never did find the well sign posted visitors information centre having circumnavigated its supposed location repeatedly from all possible directions, but only once got caught in the apparently infamous commuter traffic that explodes out of the city every evening at a snails pace.

After an excellent week around the Capital we headed off for Boston by flight – at an amazing cost of £38 each.