The Hudson is one of the most famous rivers in the world flowing as it does through the centre of New York City. It is a fairly short river at just 315miles (507km) and it rises in Henderson Lake in New York state and flows south emptying into New York Bay. Henderson Lake is fed by Feldspar Brook and the Opalescent River that flow down from the Adirondack Mountains and these can be regarded as part of the Hudson. At Waterford, the Hudson’s major tributary, the Mohawk River, joins the flow and then the Federal Dam at Troy separates the Upper Hudson from the Lower Hudson River Valley. The river travels on through the Catskill and Taconic Mountains towards New York and the Atlantic. The Lower Hudson is a tidal estuary and New York Harbor can have dangerous tides.

The Hudson flows through not just New York but past many famous landmarks – West Point, Franklin D Roosevelt’s Springwood Estate, Bannerman’s Castle, railroads and towns, bridges and Sing Sing Prison! So it is perhaps surprising that its banks also feature beautiful parkland and forests that in the autumn turn breathtaking colours. The Eric Canal connects the Hudson with Lake Erie and the other great lakes, the St Lawrence River and Seaway and Montreal. Named after the English explorer Henry Hudson, the river and its surrounding area inspired the Hudson River School of landscape painting. A group of painters including Thomas Cole and Asher Durand and heavily influenced by Constable and Turner created idealised pastoral scenes of the region, a fitting testament to its beauty.