Back on board the coach, our guide - Paul - gave out maps which showed the route we would be taking along something called the Kancamagus Highway. Kancamagus, we were told, means "the fearless one" and was the name of a famous local leader of the Penacook tribe - the last, in fact. The Penacook were one of the first tribes to come into contact with European settlers, and were thus one of the first to vanish from the face of the Earth courtesy of imported disease. One thing I can certainly confirm is that the Kancamagus is one of the most scenic drives in New Hampshire - during the fall, it is usually packed with everybody and their dog wanting to be able to say that they've seen the famous falling leaves of New England. Many of the roads and towns in this part of the country are named after native American chiefs and given native American names, mainly because many believe most of New Hampshire, Vermont and upper Massachusetts to be owned by what used to be known as the Indian people. At the time of writing, there were major battles going on between the government and the traditional land owners because the Indians only leased the land to the settlers. By the time the lease had run out, the land was covered in high rise apartment blocks, cities, towns and tens of millions of United States citizens, and most of them were under the impression that the land belonged to them.

The government, of course, wasn't about to just hand everything back - even though their own rules of contract would insist that this was the correct legal thing to do. The battle, naturally, is ongoing - even to this day.

We travelled along the entire length of the Kancamagus Highway, through the White Mountain Forest, stopping off whenever it was safe to do so - although, naturally, there were plenty of times when we got to press our faces up to the windows on either side of the coach and watch something particularly spectacular sail past because there was nowhere to stop. The main problem was that we were now frighteningly high up in the mountains and the roads were, at times, ridiculously narrow as they pressed up against sheer drops or squeezed through narrow valleys hardly wide enough to take the coach. There were plenty of little stopping points along the way, designed for drivers who wanted to pull up and stretch their feet while going "Oooh" every few seconds as they looked around - but, of course, these little stopping places were designed for cars and were totally unsuitable for parking a coach, so we had to make do with the occasional massive car park.

Massive car parks, of course, tend to suggest huge tourist attractions - so while everyone else was pulling their car over into lay-bys at the foot of spectacular gorges and getting out to take photos, we only got to stop at places that some local bigwig had decided we should look at - probably because somebody had spotted a rock which looked like a camel in the vicinity or something. Turning the coach around after parking anywhere was a nightmare as it was, since there was never any room to do so without performing a seventy-two point turn unless we fancied the idea of plummeting down the cliff just trying to get out of the car park.

The colours out here are really quite something - it's not at all surprising that New England in the fall is such a popular destination. All the roads are covered with leaves fallen from the trees, and the valleys we drive through are awash with reds and yellows. Even when we're driving along the edge of a cliff, they'll be some sort of hardy tree stuck out of it at a jaunty angle just to ensure the road gets a suitable covering of autumn leaves. So close to the Canadian border, it is also quite wonderful to see the odd sign stuck by the side of the road saying "Beware - Moose crossing" - I've never seen a Moose in my life that wasn't on a cartoon or stuck over the mantelpiece of somebody I'd rather not be friends with.

The Kancamagus Highway ends quite suddenly at the small New England town of Conway, and this is where we were finally able to pull the coach into a reasonably sized car park and get out for lunch. Conway really is the epitome of the New England town - which makes the place feel more like it's not been touched by time. Little white wooden slat houses border a central grass square on which kids were actually playing Baseball when we arrived - I didn't think there actually was such a place as a small American town like this outside of a television series, but here it was staring me in the face. Just to make the picture even more perfect, they don't go in for any of that modern electric train nonsense - a steam train connects the town of Conway with North Conway further down the valley, and I felt as though everybody in town must surely know everybody else by name. All of the houses look exactly like they've been lifted from an episode of "The Little House on the Prairie" - although, of course, I've never heard of that show and would never admit in public to having ever seen an episode of it in my life.

We relaxed in Conway for a couple of hours, sitting in the sun which had suddenly decided to shine on us for a while. At a local store, I bought a Hot Dog which looked as though it contained a sausage that was about a foot long and a beef sandwich that was clearly made out of the entire cow. They certainly believe in large portions in this country, and nobody seems to be at all bothered that we're in the middle of nowhere and there won't be too many people coming through town on a daily basis - as long as the visitors are happy when they come, the people of Conway obviously don't mind charging a ridiculously small amount of money for what must amount to a weeks supply of food for the town. It really does feel as though this is a place cut off from the rest of the world, and that anything would take a week to ship in if they ever ran out of it. I want to live here, but then I often say that about small towns and then usually find one I want to live in even more just down the road. Sitting on a bench on the village green, I turned casually and smiled at the young woman with the baby sitting next to me, who smiled back and asked me if I was having a nice day in that way that Americans do even if the ground is covered in five foot of snow. After making casual conversation and standing up to leave, I suddenly noticed that the baby she was cradling in her arms was actually in the process of being fed - if you get my meaning. Only in small town America would a woman carry on a conversation on a park bench with a complete stranger while breast feeding her baby. You've got to love this country.

I don't know why our guide gave us such a long time for lunch in Conway, although I certainly wasn't complaining. Perhaps our driver needed some time to calm down after having to drive us along the edge of cliffs on wet autumn leaves for most of the morning, but at least it gave us all plenty of time to look around this charming New England town.

We only stopped once more on our way to Montpelier, to take a look at a road bridge in the town of Jackson - and when I say road bridge, I'm not talking about some modern metal monstrosity which serves its purpose but looks terrible. No, Jackson is the proud owner of one of the last, and quite possibly the most photographed, covered bridges in the United States. Covered bridges are generally associated with small town America, and usually cross nothing more than a narrow stream - most were built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and are wooden constructions with a pointed roof and walls to allow a single lane of traffic to cross. Traffic, of course, meant a horse and cart at the time rather than anything with an engine - so covered bridges are rarely suitable for cars to cross and were usually replaced by modern concrete road bridges long ago. Some places, however, such as Jackson, can be applauded for hanging onto their heritage and leaving these things as they are - and tourists such as myself can come along with cameras and snap away happily, pretending for a moment that the modern world doesn't exist. In fact, and quite rightly so, many towns have slapped preservation orders on the bridges so that nobody could lay a hand on them even they wanted to - these really are a remnant of the old world which I wouldn't want to see disappear.

Covered bridges weren't just invented to look quaint, of course. Originally in New England, bridges were made from wood - that being the only viable material at the time out in the back of beyond - and placing anything made of wood out in the elements across a body of water is probably asking for trouble. Within years of these bridges being put in place, they would be well on their way to rotting and people would find themselves crossing the stream one day and being thrown into the water quite unexpectedly accompanied by a loud crack as the bridge gave way beneath them.

The solution was to put a roof on the bridge, which naturally protected the bridge itself from the weather and increased its life tenfold - more if it was properly looked after. Naturally, the bridge at Jackson is well loved by the community and anybody suggesting that it should be replaced is likely to find themselves being swiftly kicked out of town. The most famous covered bridge portrayed in modern fiction is in the film Beetlejuice, a film set in New England - Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are killed when their car drives through the wall of a covered bridge and plunges into the river below in the opening few minutes of the film, returning to haunt their typical old fashioned New England wooden slat home in order to rid it of its obnoxious new Yuppie owners.

Our hotel for the night was the Bolton Valley Ski Resort in the mountains of Vermont, and was probably the best hotel I've had the pleasure of staying at for quite some time. Originally, our tour didn't include a stay at such a prestigious place - instead, we were supposed to be staying at some run of the mill roadside motel out of town somewhere. However, fate being what it is, the skies decided to open up one day a few months ago and cause a river or two to burst their banks - I received a letter in the post one morning apologising for the inconvenience but pointing out that we wouldn't be able to stay in the hotel in the brochure on the grounds that itwas currently underwater. British people being generally unable to accept anything without an argument, I feel certain that the tour company had lots of irate customers phoning up to complain and cancelling their holidays without even thinking about what the alternative might be, but I just accepted it as one of those things and was more than happy to find myself being driven up into the mountains to a ski resort.

All I was really missing was a pair of skis so that I could hurl myself down the mountain and crash into several trees at a hundred miles an hour! I wanted to find out the names and telephone numbers of anybody who had cancelled their holiday because of the change of hotel, just so that I could call them up on the phone and blow raspberries at them! The interesting thing is that, when I look for reviews of the hotel on the internet now, I find a lot of people moaning about the place - but I didn't get a bad impression at all. People will always find something to moan about, and if you go out of season then there probably won't be much open, but hey - our evening was great and certainly a lot better than it would've been in a roadside motel somewhere.

Our waitress at dinner was a young lady who managed to go through all the normal levels of excitement that Americans seem to do when they discover that they're talking to somebody with a British accent, asking us to say everything several times and telling us how great we sounded. The couple at the next table asked her, when she brought their drinks, why it is that Americans insist on filling their glasses with ice all the time even when the temperature outside is sub zero. To her eternal merit, she didn't know the answer and conceded that, now that she thought about it, it was actually a pretty silly idea. Bartenders in bars and restaurants over here will actually provide beer that is so cold that they have to literally snap the bottles out of the ice in the fridge where they have become lodged solid - we haven't quite got to that stage back home yet, but I have noticed over the last few years that Britain has suddenly gone from laughing at the idea of Americans drinking cold beer while they laugh at us for drinking warm beer, to complaining loudly if our beer isn't ice cold. When did that happen? Unless I missed a major lesson somewhere, I learnt quite early on at school that the colder a drink gets, the less you can taste its flavour - so ice cold beer has literally got no flavour. Ask any scientist. Why do people insist that their beer is flavourless before they'll drink it? It's beyond me. And why do the manufacturers place little labels on their bottles which say things like "best served ice cold", which essentially means "best served with all the flavour removed".

Perhaps their beer actually has no flavour in the first place, and they don't want you to notice.

After dinner, the hotel had laid on entertainment in the form of a native American in full head gear and traditional costume who lived on a reservation across the river and had come across to sit by the roaring fire in the hotel tavern and tell old Indian campfire stories. Now, I have to confess to feeling just a little bit stupid here. Back on the coach, we had been told by Paul that we would be getting a talk from an Indian gentleman in the bar after dinner, and for some reason I had not made the connection between the word "Indian" and the expression "Native American". For this reason, I spent the whole evening wondering why somebody from India would bother coming to the hotel and trying to decide what on earth he would want to talk to us about - so you can imagine my delight to discover that we were in for an evening of exciting stories of legend from a truly scary looking bloke whose headdress almost touched the ceiling. I had a fantastic time - it was almost like being back at school as we all huddled around the fire with our storyteller leaning forward as though to confide in us, lowering his voice to a whisper and then suddenly throwing his arms in the air and screeching to indicate an eagle taking flight while we all fell off our stools in shock. I was only slightly disappointed to find out later, from the Indian storyteller himself I hasten to add, that he wasn't actually of Native American birth - he had been in the American Navy, got married, had a child and got divorced before deciding one day to join the local tribe, change his name to "He who sings the wolf song" and move onto a reservation. As you do.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.