Wilmington & Fayetteville, North Carolina

We left Savannah on Friday morning and caught the northbound train to Fayetteville, which we immediately deserted in favour of the hometown of One Tree Hill. It was an exciting trip. We rented a car at the Fayetteville airport, shoved Lucy in the driver’s seat, and set off down the wrong side of the road to Wilmington. It all went very well: we survived, the car survived, and despite my very special navigation skills, it was all very smooth sailing.


Wilmington is an easy breezy riverside town. It’s rather bigger than we expected, but still very pretty and quaint, with a local market and everything. We caught a ferry across the river to reach the basketball court that featured on One Tree Hill. The court, the posts and the bleachers were plastered with fan-graffiti, mainly consisting of proposals to Chad Michael Murray and ‘One Tree Hill saved my life in high school’. I didn’t add to this graffiti, but I can’t vouch for Lucy.

Back on the town side of the river, we strolled through the streets and found, amongst other things, a man dressed as a mannequin dressed as a man. Lucy and I failed to realise that he was actually alive, and lost all dignity by screaming when he started moving. Or maybe that was just me. It was horrifying. We also found Karen’s Café from One Tree Hill, and the bridge that Lucas crosses in the opening credits. Thrilling stuff.


At some point, we decided to head back to Fayetteville and explore the town for a couple of hours. Thirty minutes turned out to be more than sufficient, and, stuck with essentially nothing to do for five hours, we went to the local cinema and watched Stupid Crazy Love (with Steve Carrell and Emma Stone). Mum and Dad: you’d both enjoy it, go see it! Mel: Michael from The Office; nuff said. Michael: it’s got enough chick-flickiness for you to enjoy it.

And now we’re at the Fayetteville Amtrak station. We still have two hours to wait for our train. It leaves at 12:45am. And we arrive at 7am in Washington DC.

Awesome.