Forget the Hamptons, this is where New York celebs escape to the country

The main advantage a train has over a car is that a train is magic. One minute I’m in the centre of Manhattan (Penn Station beside Madison Square Garden) on a 36-degree midsummer’s day watching police move on vagrants, the next I’m gazing through glass at a river (the Hudson), framed by tall, green mountain ranges (The Catskills). Eighty-something minutes out of midtown Manhattan, I’m detraining into a hamlet (Rhinecliff) of 386 inhabitants. There’s not much here except for a small bar set beside the water, whose regulars tell me they wouldn’t live back in the city for all the money on Wall Street.

Forget the Hamptons, Dutchess County flies under all the tourist radars. Credit: Stocksy

This place - Dutchess County - is where celebs escape fame on sprawling horse estates (think Liam Neeson, Meryl Streep), and where claustrophobic New Yorkers moved to evade COVID lockdown; yet it still feels like I’m breaking new ground just being here. Come the weekend, New Yorkers descend en masse, but mid-week, it’s all mine.

Dutchess County is a compilation of historic villages (and we’re talking the very start of modern-day America) set among genuine wilderness, between the Hudson River to the west and the state of Connecticut to the east.

Once a collection of Royal land patents (granted from 1685), the mansions of some of America’s wealthiest families, including the Vanderbilts, still stand. You can walk through the fanciest of them for a fee or picnic right beside them for free. There’s also an inn which once provided a room for George Washington (the Beekman Arms claims to be the longest continuously run accommodation in the US).

But while international tourists swarm in their millions on New York City, then make summer pilgrimages to the Hamptons, Dutchess County (which is actually closer than the Hamptons) flies under all their radars.

Rhinebeck is the county’s best-known town, perhaps because movie star Paul Rudd owns a sweet shop in its main street, but it’s not that well known. I’m staying at a French provincial-style spa retreat, Mirbeau Inn & Spa, just metres from its main street. Within two days I feel like I’m on a first-name basis with most people in the village. I might also be their token Australian. The town reaches its zenith in the early evening as patrons sit al fresco outside a handful of pretty wine bars and restaurants, taking in the twilight. By 10pm, they’re all home in bed.

I don’t see Rudd in his sweet shop but across the county, in a picturesque little town beside the Connecticut border called Millerton, I’m told I missed Kevin Bacon by a minute (he lives 20 minutes away, in Connecticut).

I ride a bike from town along a rail trail that takes me through forest to a tiny town bordered by mountain ranges where locals have converted an old seven-storey grain elevator into a non-profit, artist-run art gallery and artist residency. The whole county reeks of creativity; many residents are city folk who left the big smoke not content to spend their days sitting on their front porches, staring at clouds. There are also no less than four drive-in cinemas, with one, the Four Brothers Drive-In, set around a stunning margarita bar and outdoor cafe where Ethan Hawke just posted to Instagram.

Each day I find towns more charming than the last. I leave Rhinebeck and move to Tivoli. It’s smaller yet: just a main street with a Mexican restaurant, a great local’s pub and an ice-cream shop where musicians entertain patrons on the cobbled bricks outside. It’s next door to the Tivoli Hotel, where I dine outside on a wrap-around verandah each evening and watch the world go by. During breakfast one morning, a delivery driver backs into my rental vehicle and I meet everyone in town.

I love that all this small-town contentment can be located so close to America’s most populated city. Sure, there’s a bigger town here, Poughkeepsie (population 35,000), but I keep well clear, working my way instead round some of America’s oldest villages.

The writer travelled courtesy of I Love New York and Dutchess Tourism.

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