The road to Botany Bay

This was one of the most atmospheric places we visited in South Carolina.

If you live in Northern Ireland or you're a Game of Thrones fan, you might be put in mind of the Dark Hedges, near Armoy in County Antrim. This is the road to Botany Bay Plantation, near Edisto Beach, 3798 miles away.

It's the same idea - an avenue of trees lending grandeur to the approach to a stately house. But these are southern live oaks rather than beeches. And the road is surfaced with sand. And only two other people passed by in the half hour that we spent there.

The quiet, the quality of the late afternoon southern light, and the sense of history all around made travelling the road a special, almost spiritual experience. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have imagined stories and films rising from every bend in the road.

In a place like this, stories start romantic, but it doesn't take long before painful historical facts intrude and you see the reality of the lovingly tended plantation grounds. It's a landscape built up to grandeur on slavery, fading into decline ever since, but still beautiful.

When you come from Ireland, you're used to finding that your history has a traumatic flip side and beauty is troubled. Maybe that's always the way.

(Looking backwards from the more elegant angle of the shoot...)