I'm trying to be a "soccer mom". I'm wearing box-fresh sneakers, Old Navy chinos and a cable-knit sweater over my Ralph Lauren polo shirt. I've got the supersize fridge filled with supersize cartons of orange juice. I've got a supersize Chevy ready to purr into action on the drive. And I've even got a super-luxurious, candy-coloured three-bedroom house, complete with more domestic appliances than I knew existed. Oh, and a pitcher of homemade lemonade waiting for me on the porch.

All I really need to complete this portrait of domestic bliss, American style, is a chisel-jawed soccer dad to take the kids to play ball, and leave me to fix my nails, or cook an apple pie. In reality, the only things that are actually mine in this All-American Dream are the two super-cute, super-active children, pulling at my sleeve to make me play football with them.

Twenty four hours ago, the scene was rather different, and much closer to the mayhem of my real life. Queues for immigration through Savannah airport moved at a snail's pace as my two children trailed their cuddlies behind them, wobbly with jet lag. When I finally shuffled in front of the immigration official, he frowned at my clutch of passports, blanking the smile I threw him.

"Ma'am, where is your husband?" he said, head tilted to one side at a decidedly hostile angle. My husband? I didn't have one and hadn't for several years. Were they a prerequisite for entering the country? Many forms and more questions later we escaped.

But so lovely is my new home that I've quickly become that squeaky-clean soccer mom who certainly doesn't answer back to immigration officials. Anyway, how can I be cross when I've got a prime chunk of tasty Southern real estate to myself?

The house where we're staying is in the picture-perfect village on Palmetto Bluff, a 20,000-acre nature reserve on the May River in the Low Country of South Carolina. The inn at the heart of the village is owned by Auberge Resorts, which also owns properties in Napa Valley, California and in Mexico, but the village here is made up of about 80 per cent permanent residents plus holidaying couples and families.

There are 50 cottages and a number of larger village houses plus a spa, fitness centre and outdoor swimming pool and several restaurants. The houses are comfortable and pretty, painted in tastefully muted colours, and across the water you can see the houses of Daufuskie Island to the east and the ancient freshwater rice fields of the New River to the west.

There's a certain grandeur to the location, too. In the middle of the 18th century, 15 plantations occupied the land, producing indigo, rice and cotton. The area is also prized as hunting ground for deer, wild turkey, waterfowl and wild boar, and was bought by RT Wilson jnr in 1911. He built a mansion with 72 rooms, 22 bathrooms and a vaulted ballroom, and though it burned down in 1925, something of its imposing colonial spirit lingers among the 17th-century oaks towering over the chapel and mansion ruins on the village green.

The melancholy, marshy nature reserves on the Bluff are stunning. At dusk we take a kayak along some of the waterways, the water inky around us, Spanish moss hanging in clumps above us. We see snowy egrets and wood stalks, but best of all is when a log spouts legs and swims away: I realise that the signs saying "Please do not feed the Alligators" are not for show.

Palmetto Bluff is close to Hilton Head Island, the country's largest inland island after Long Island. During the Civil War, this area was ravaged in the course of General Sherman's "March to the Sea". In his diaries, Sherman describes his "simple waste and destruction" of property and land worth $80 million in South Carolina alone. Until then, it had been prime plantation country, and the preserve of fishermen who exported their hauls to New England.

But in the early 20th century, property developers cashed in on the allure of this sunny slice of America, edged by miles and miles of glorious shallow, sandy beaches and wealthy holidaymakers started arriving. The development gathered momentum in the Seventies, but it remains a bubble of wealth in a very poor state, with smart yachts in the marinas and a proliferation of golf courses. Scratch the surface and you'll find crab shacks and shrimp stalls that have been on the island since the Sixties.

The shallow, sandy beaches, lined with sea dunes and spiky maran grass are textbook perfect. We spend much of our days on the beach, picnicking and playing Frisbee, splashing in the warm surf, my children running up and down the empty beach in the sun naked, as though it belongs to them.

One day, on Squire Pope Road, we find Hudson's, a café with orders chalked onto the wall, where we eat sweet potato corn bread, grilled oysters and fried squid at tables covered in red and white checked plastic table clothes. This is a great place to eat seafood, but Hilton Head is also a very good place for wildlife. Later in our stay we go out onto the intercoastal waterway that runs from New England to Florida and Texas on a boat with Captain Scot and his Labrador, Woody. We chug past oyster beds where blue herons are feeding, out into the open waterway, as a rare wood stalk flies overhead.

The landscape reminds me of the beauty of the Norfolk Broads, only ahead of us I can see dolphins cutting through the shimmering water. Because the dolphins have no local predators, it's a good place to see them feeding on mullet and shad. Scott often recognises the same dolphins, and a particular favourite always comes to the boat to see Woody. On cue, a dolphin swims close enough to the boat to touch before flipping its tail, leaving my children wide-eyed. They thought that sort of thing only happened in films.

I'm too much of a Gone with the Wind devotee to forgo the chance of visiting Charleston, which is about three hours north. We drive up the coast, past roadside shacks selling piles of shrimp, past the Beer and Bait store, The Family Life Centre and the Church of the Cross (est. 1767, built 1854.) We stop in Beaufort, often used as a film location, including Prince of Tides and Forrest Gump, for iced tea and maple and chilli muffins

Charleston turns out to be a city that lives up to the considerable weight of celluloid expectation. This is, after all, the place Rhett Butler told Scarlett he must return to after the twin horrors of the war and his marriage to her, "to see if somewhere there isn't something left in life of charm and grace."

Down the cobbled streets, among the nodding palms and glamorous antebellum houses, a good deal of what Rhett wanted does still exist. The best way to explore is probably on foot, but with children in tow it is easier to take one of the many
horse-drawn carriage tours.

The wide, quiet streets are lined with the state tree, the cabbage Palmetto, or live oaks draped in Spanish moss, and it's easy to imagine girls in corsets flirting with cavalrymen in the huge porches of the houses before they left for war. Walk down Rainbow Row, the longest stretch of colonial houses in the US, or along The Battery, where the imposing mansions look out to sea, and you realise that it's easy to feel romantic and graceful in Charleston. Much of the south is brash, but Charleston is a gem.

We visit Jestine's Kitchen in Meeting Street to sample her famous sweet chicken, then drive back to Palmetto Bluff as dusk falls. We stop to buy a jar of cherry jelly and atwist of hot roasted peanuts, scattered with sea salt, before the children fall asleep. I tune into the local country music station, singing along to Willie Nelson and dreaming of Rhett Butler.

According to America's etiquette expert, the late Marjabelle Young Stewart, Charleston is the "most mannerly city" in America. I glance behind me at the children, their hair rumpled, fingers and cheeks smeared with cherry jam and peanut husks, and I can see that just as I could never be a real soccer mum, they could never be mannerly Charleston children. But for a week at least, we have fun trying.

GETTING THERE
America As You Like (020 8742 8299; www.americaasyoulikeit.com) can arrange a seven-night stay at a cottage at the Inn at Palmetto Bluff (www.palmettobluffresort.com), from £1,795 per person, based on two sharing, including return flights to Savannah on Delta Air Lines, via Atlanta, and convertible car hire.