Driving Tours of Boston's North Shore

Salem Smugglers' Tours

The Exotic Driving Tours

Boston's Gold Coast and the Equestrian areas to the west have several wonderful day trips to offer. Either it be perusing through the antique shops of Essex and visiting an American Castle or taking three short hikes through estates of the past. You do want to be remembered as the one who knew how to find the really cool stuff!

Choose your adventure below and we will make the magic happen.

Castle Hill Food and Shopping Tour

1PM on Saturdays~ Gilded Age Mansion, Fried Clams, Country Drive, and Antique Shopping. Tour last 4.5hrs. Group size is 1-7.
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3 Hikes Tour

1PM on Thursdays~ On our drive we will venture into the woods, a manorial garden, and the ruins of an estate where man and nature dance together through time.. Tour last 4.5hrs. Group size is 1-7.
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Sunday Local Drive

1PM on Sundays~ Learn the scenic routes in your area and be able to plan your own day trips. Tour last 2.5hrs. Group size is 1-4.
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Castle Hill Food and Shopping Tour

Please park at Hospital Point Beverly at the end of Bayview Ave. on the Ocean. From there we will enter our tour car and travel to Essex and Ipswich for fried clams, antiques, Russell Orchard's farm stand, and the famous Castle Hill (admission included). This is one of the local's favorite day trips!

Castle Hill has appeared in the movies: Witches of Eastwick starring Susan Sarandon, Cher, Michele Pfeiffer, and Jack Nicholson, Ghost of Girlfriend's Past with Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner, The Equalizer with Denzel Washington, The Next Karate Kid with Pat Morita and Hilary Swank, and Flowers in the Attic with Louise Fletcher and Victoria Tennant. On the way to Castle Hill, we will also stop at Chebacoo Lake which was a location in Adam Sandler's Grown Ups.

1pm Saturdays

Tour lasts 4.5hrs | 1-7 People

Price: $520 - $626

The Local Drive

Please park at Lynch Park in Beverly. This tour is for those who have just moved to town and want to learn more about the area. We will venture on the routes that will bring you to most of the North Shore day trip destinations. Once you learn these routes you will open up a lifetime of journeys. Also these roads are some of the most beautiful Sunday drives in the country. They are filled with ocean vistas, winding wooded trails, amazing architecture, quaint farm stands, local boutiques, public gardens, ponds, swimming holes, kayaking, biking woods, and hiking preserves.

We will begin our journey on Rt 127 which will bring us through Prides Crossing, Beverly Farms, Manchester-by-the-Sea, and Magnolia along the ocean driving past the mansions of Boston's Gold Coast. Then we will head west on Rt 133 through Gloucester, Essex, and Ipswich past horse farms, salt marshes, antique stores, kayaking, and clam shacks. Once in Ipswich we will venture to Little and Great Neck and see the mouth of the Ipswich River on the ocean. Then we will travel back and see the largest collection of First Period Homes (1600s-1700) in the country. Then we will head south on Olde Rt 1 to Topsfield which is the top of the county and venture into the woods past English Manors. Then we will head back east on Rt 97 past farmlands and hiking preserves. We will stoop and stretch our legs as we hike through JC Phillips Preserve. Afterwards we will head to Larch Street through Hamilton and Wenham past fine architecture set in the country. Afterward we will continue east down Rt 22 past Longhill Garden back to Lynch Park.

This is the basic tour of the North Shore. Come back and take other Sunday Drives with us and learn other great routes that will open up day trips to Trustees of the Reservation sites, Historic New England properties, Audubon Society preserves, public gardens, farm stands, hiking preserves, swimming holes, kayaking locations, rail trails, ocean vistas, architecture tours, boutique shopping, food tours, live music, music festivals, rappelling cliffs, ocean chasms, museums, house tours, handmade ice cream, castles, antiques, and more!

1pm Sundays

Tour lasts 2.5hrs | 1-4 People

Price: $300

3 Hikes Tour

Please park at Lynch Park in Beverly. On our 3 hikes we will venture into the woods, a manorial garden, and the ruins of an estate to see how man and nature dance together through time. First we will enter our tour car and travel a few minutes to the Sally Milligan Nature Preserve. In this arrowhead shaped park we will venture on various trails to the old manor wall and back again. From there we will ride to Long Hill Garden.

From 1916 to 1978, Long Hill was the summer home of the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, Ellery Sedgwick. He summered here with his first wife, Mabel Cabot Sedgwick, author of The Garden Month by Month, and his second wife, Marjorie Russell Sedgwick, a rare plants specialist. His two wives created a delightful, enchanting landscape, surrounded by more than 100 acres of woodland. Now it is open for us to view all of its blooming trees and plants surrounding a Georgian manor.

Next we will head to the JC Phillips Nature Preserve. The JC Phillips Nature Preserve is 85 acres in the Northwest corner of Moraine Farm in Beverly, Mass. John Charles Phillips hired famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead to design and lay out a functioning farm and homestead. Olmstead designed the carriage trails exemplifying the natural landscape, hiding the hand of man in its design. JC's son Ambassador William Phillips built a Italianate mansion named Highover in 1913 on what is now the Nature Preserve. The mansion burned down in 1968, soon after his death, but some of its ruins and footprint are still there. Ambassador Phillips served in the State Department for much of the first half of the 20th century, with postings in China, Western Europe, and India. He was head of the OSS in London during WWIII. The preserve sits on Wenham Lake and is bordered by a moraine, a hill formed at the end of a glacier which blocks glacial melt water from leaving. After hiking past the ruins and walking along the lake we will head back and drive to our beginning.

1pm Tuesdays

Tour lasts 4.5hrs | 1-7 People

Price :$500- $600

The Natural Beauty of the Gold Coast

Exotic Driving Tours

Chris Dowgin wearing a derby hat The Boston's Gold Coast started in the late nineteenth century and continues today attracting the rich, powerful, and famous to call it home. As property taxes got too high in Boston, the wealthy moved North along the ocean starting in Nahant and eventually made it to Rockport where a living art colony sprung up that attracted many of our world's masters. Presidents ran the country here as they left the hot summers in Washington. Plus artists like Frederick Law Olmstead created many of the properties you will find here. Plus there are a few castles dotted along the way. Hidden within this area are farm stand, music festivals, grand gardens, estates, grand stories, beaches, shopping, dinning, hiking, and more!

The Gold Coast consists of the towns on the North Shore in Cape Ann including Roc port, Gloucester, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Beverly Farms, Prides Crossing, and Ipswich which the people who shaped the 20th century built their mansions and castles on during the Gilded Age. Come back throughout the year and see our different Driving tour options of Boston's Gold Coast. After you take one of our Driving tours, why not try one of our biking, walking, or self-guided tours. We are Cape Ann's Day Trip company providing tours daily.

Embrace the Beauty and Grandeur!!!

Power Brokers and Presidents of the Gold Coast

History and Location of Lynch Park

Lynch Park is the meeting place for our tours. It has an interesting history. It was once the summer White House for two years during William Howard Taft's presidency. A stay which didn't end well with the woman who had owned it. She had to be restrained from burning the residence down after she evicted him. The house was named Stetson Hall, named after the man who built it and invented the cowboy hat. The house was saved by Louise Dupont Crowninshield and her husband Keno Crowninshield and moved across the harbor on two barges to Peach's Point in Marblehead. The mansion used to reside where the rose garden is now. Click here for a complete history. The house also appears in The Sinclair Narratives' tale in Arkham: Tales from the Flipside.

COOL!