Before this year my one and only visit to America came over nine years ago for a university trip to Florida (which I wrote about in one of my earliest blogs) but with my friend Josh doing a placement year at Duke University in North Carolina there was a prime opportunity for another visit. Originally, I was supposed to fly out with another friend Rob, but unfortunately family circumstances dictated it wasn’t possible for him to go. That left the three of us, including our American friend Kev. Though flying alone was not the most exciting at least the direct flight to Raleigh was not overly long, at around eight or nine hours.

Arriving in the afternoon, the first day was not an ambitious one given I was tired from travelling (Kev’s flight from Washington was somewhat shorter than mine). First, we took public transport to our Airbnb accommodation which was a very lovely house we ended up having all to ourselves. When I say public transport, I of course mean Uber, which we relied upon for our entire trip. There’s no chance of extensive buses or trains in this part of the world. Once we had a bit of a rest we headed out to downtown Durham where we met Josh and had a few beers before a decent curry. What struck me straight away however was that the portion sizes and prices were almost identical to that of the UK. Gone are the days of mega portions for a few bucks. Inflation is biting everywhere.

The first full day saw us visit the state capital of Raleigh which Josh had never actually visited despite living next door for nine months. He’s a hard worker. The weather in the UK in April had been pretty miserable so to be strolling around in mid-to-high twenties sunshine certainly lifted my spirits. Initially we just walked around exploring and it was a completely different experience to being in a city back home. First of all there are no buildings we’d consider old, everything is much newer and more modern and on top of that everything is just so much bigger and wider. With space not being at a premium here there’s little incentive to be efficient with it. The Governors’ house makes Number 10 Downing Street seem rather modest. It also felt so empty in comparison. There’re no shops in the centre, you have to go to an out-of-town shopping centre for that, and perhaps being a Friday no one was working in the many office buildings. Americans also seem to have an allergy to walking.

In need of a proper breakfast, we tried to find somewhere local and authentic, and we ended up choosing Big Ed’s, exactly the kind of American diner we were looking for. Though there was a moment of confusion when the waiter asked if I wanted my eggs ‘over-easy or sunny side up’. Preferably I just wanted them cooked. At this point I should probably mention what I am shooting with. As I wanted to travel light, I just took my ninety-year-old Leica iii with five rolls of Kodak Image Pro 100, Kodak’s cheapest pro-line film. I’d never shot it before but had always heard good things and with the sunny weather ISO 100 was perfectly fine. The low levels of grain giving every bit of help to this photographic relic of a bygone era. I just regret not bringing one extra roll.

After fuelling up we continued our walk through the city which included a memorable encounter outside McDonalds. Two policemen rocked up in a cool looking ATV and before long the heavily tattooed criminal who they’d be called to shoo away came out. He immediately took an interest in the Leica and as you can see, he was very keen to pose to have his photo taken. Afterwards we very promptly crossed the road. Eventually we circled back to near where we started and visited two of the (free) state museums, one on history and the other natural history. It was here that I learned that the Wright Brothers made their famous first flight in North Carolina. I really enjoyed learning more about this state as it’s not somewhere on the usual tourist trail or heavily spoken about. Sadly that has changed as of late for all the wrong reasons given the havoc caused by Hurricane Helene. Our day ended at Pullen Park with its attractive recreational lake and later in the evening back in Durham we continued our streak of fine dining with a trip to Bullock’s Barbeque for proper southern barbeque ribs. Good eating. Endless free hushpuppies was also a good bonus.

The second full day saw us explore more of the local history as we visited Historic Stagville, once part of one of the largest slave plantations in North Carolina. At its peak it had nine hundred slaves and covered an area of thirty thousand acres which is about one hundred and twenty square kilometres. Both mind boggling numbers. Given that all the slavery of the British Empire happened overseas I’d never seen anything like it and it helped to tell a much more human side to the story of the transatlantic slave trade. The site had several buildings that date back to that period and saw use, from the manor house that the owners lived in to housing for the slaves. What was perhaps most poignant were the human marks of fingerprints and feet prints left in the bricks. For people who couldn’t read or write it was their only way to stamp their identity on a place they had to call home. The inside had been set-up to show how people would have actually lived, though I believe all the furniture are recreations.

What was perhaps most remarkable was the large barn which had also been built by slaves and which showed how skilled some of them actually were. They did more than just pick cotton. After slavery ended the site became used by poor sharecroppers, many of which were the families of former slaves, before a tobacco company bought the land in the 1950s. Near the manor house was a small cemetery where a few members of the white family were buried, but once a bigger house was built nearby no more people were interred. That house is not part of Historic Stagville.  An extra bonus for me were the skinks that were scampering around the site in and around the buildings (I believe they were coal skinks). We also found a Fowler’s toad hiding under a rock.

The site was a way out into the countryside and though we managed to get an Uber there we quickly realised we were effectively stranded and not able to get one back. We were just too far out of town. Luckily our tour guide Victoria, who had also given us a lift in her car around the site, was also able to give us a lift back to Durham as she herself headed home to Raleigh. The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying a few beers before strolling around the American Tobacco Historic District, an old factory site that has in modern times been redeveloped into a trendy area of bars and restaurants in a similar fashion to Battersea Power Station in London. We’d packed a lot into a few days, but we’d only reached the halfway point of the trip. Tune in next week for our time on campus at Duke University and a hike around a picturesque lake.

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