Bleisure in Rockport: Heading for the tip

Surrounded by the tides, Boston is a city with a lively, iodised air that invites adventure. The notion of the outdoors is an integral part of city life. Just head north on Highway 93 or take one of the winding coastal roads and you'll already feel like you're on holiday. In just a few kilometres. As soon as you leave the suburbs, the New England villages appear, with their traditional main street, a long main street lined with wooden houses and white churches flanked by the drugstore and the town hall. And that's how you make your way, slowly, towards Rockport, at the very end of Cape Ann, a rocky cape battered by the winds less than 70 kilometres from Boston.

Along the way, we stop off in Salem. Especially for its name, made famous by an Arthur Miller play and evoking the dark days when the Puritans of the
In the 17th century, some fifteen women were executed for witchcraft. You can still see their houses, lit by bottle-bottomed windows. But there's nothing spectacular about Salem, except that this is where the journey really begins. Just beyond, the cool, buttery sandy coves hemmed in by rocks suddenly give way to dense forests of pine and maple.

Brittany across the Atlantic

The landscapes become sharp, mineral; the sensations both sylvan and marine. The water, with its eternally changing colours, remains cold all year round. You reach Rockport after passing through Gloucester, a city where the fishing industry is still essential. Then, all of a sudden, long pebble beaches, with Thacher Island in the distance and the wild expanses of Halibut Point. And the amazing whales that you can watch from tiny boats. The coastline here is never disfigured by 70s-style warts, but enhanced by lush houses, some dating back to the Arts & Craft era, the American equivalent of Art Nouveau.

Rockport, it's true, has always attracted artists, who settled here in the early 20th century. In the village itself, built around the harbour in 1743, easels still crowd in front of the emblematic bright red boathouse, where lobster traps hang. It's a shack, but one so photographed and painted that the people of Rockport have nicknamed it "Motif 1".

Lobster... almost a totem animal. To come to Rockport without tasting it would be heresy. You can enjoy it whole, in rolls with brioche bread and a touch of mayonnaise, or in bisque. And since 2005, you can even accompany it with a glass of white wine or beer. An extravagance not seen since 1856, when Rockport became one of the fifteen 'dry' towns in Massachusetts. But even today, there's no need to go looking for liquor stores - they're still banned. No matter, the invigorating sea air is enough to intoxicate.