Martha's Vineyard rewards a slow visit. The island is small enough that you can cross it in half an hour by car, large enough that each town has its own personality, and surrounded by enough beach, harbour, and salt pond that you could spend a fortnight here without exhausting it. The headline sights are the dramatic clay cliffs at Aquinnah, the Flying Horses Carousel in Oak Bluffs, the Methodist gingerbread cottages of Wesleyan Grove, and the Federal whaling-captain houses of Edgartown. But the real reward is in the texture: salt marshes, lighthouse beaches, fishing harbours.