“If you have never navigated the Wye, you have never seen the world”.
In 1770, the Cumberland-born Rev.William Gilpin, while headmaster of Cheam School in Surrey, undertook a tour of Monmouthshire’s Wye Valley and wrote a book about it, “Observations On The River Wye and Sebera; Parts Of South Wales”, published in 1782. It became the first tourist guide and holiday brochure, inviting you ”to examine the face of the country by the rules of picturesque beauty.”
Dr John Egerton, Rector of Ross-on-Wye and son of the Bishop of Hereford, had already started giving river cruises in his specially-built boat. That boat turned into a fleet of eight and then thirty local private pleasure boat businesses. Ross’s Hope and Anchor pub and the sixteenth century Saracen’s Head at Symonds Yat became the world’s first river cruise terminals.
And the Lower Wye Valley , on the English-Welsh border the birthplace of British tourism. On land and river.
Improved road communications and travel restrictions in continental Europe – produced a spike in British domestic tourism in the 1780s and 1790s. Victorian “tourists” were issued with the first walking route maps printed by Heath’s of Monmouth. They walked 35 miles in two days from Ross on Wye to Chepstow to see the harvest moon rise through the 1131 Tintern Abbey’s east Window. Wordsworth was inspired by the views at Whitestone and Cleddon – “no poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this”.
The first package holidays alighted at Martridge Meadow to visit the Piercefield Estate and landscaped park ( Coleridge described the view as ” the whole world imaged in its vats circumference”) as well as the Norman Goodrich castle ( the approach to which was deemed by some as “ too incommodious for well-dressed women”, Lover’s Leap and the Giant’s Rock viewing platform.
And advised : ” to bring some gunpowder and leave it with Mr Morris’s gardener in order to fire some small cannon on the Rock as you pass by. The reverberating echo of which you will find has a wonderful effect.’ At one time a stone giant stood above the cave entrance. He held a huge boulder over his head, as if about to hurl it on the walkers below. The giant and his boulder suffered from frost damage and slowly crumbled away.
There were excursions to Llanthony Abbey and the Kymin’s 1794 Summerhouse and 1801 Naval temple visited by Nelson. The first tourists and river cruisers picnicked on the Coldwell Rocks, took in Wales’s first stone-built castle at Chepstow, the romantic ruins of Wilton castle and the iron foundries which “brought animation to the romantic scenes”
The area attracted “topographical artists” like Turner. Some argue that Gilpin ( 1724-1804), who also produced a guide book of the Lake District, is the father of Instagram. He defined the picturesque as “that kind of reality which is agreeable in a picture.” He liked pictures to be “charmingly grouped.”
The Wye Valley has been a designated a AONB ( Area of Outstanding Beauty) since 1971.
From March-October, CelticTrails is offering easy/moderate 3 -day /four-night, self-guided Rev Gilpin’s Picturesque Beauty and Landscape Appreciation Walking Tours. From £490.
You can also now do an hour’s river cruises down the river on the Kingfisher or Wye Pride. £10 isn’t bad for the oldest historic and most picturesque river cruise in the world! Today, bow haulers are not required and ,although there are no coracles or flat-bottomed “trows” to be seenon the river anymore, “the most perfect river views”.
Gilpin, who also wrote a guide to the gardens at Stowe, Buckinghamshire and a guidebook with aquatints on the Lake District, developed a set of rules for defining ‘the Picturesque’, creating an artistic movement which had a lasting effect on landscape appreciation.
In the late eighteenth and early eighteenth centuries, doing the Wye Tour was one of the most luxurious and privileged things you could do. The railways brought more tourists, In those days, most walked the Prospect promenade and stayed at Ross’s Royal Hotel( which had special steps built down to the river Wye “for the elegantly dressed”), The King’s Head in Monmouth’s Agincourt Square and The George, Chepstow which William Thackeray described as “one of the cleanest, friendliest, fresh salmon-giving inns”. Sadly , not so now for some. You can rent cottage and stay at Roger and Marta Brook’s acclaimed B&B and restaurant www.parvafarmhouse.co.uk where can you sample contemporary Welsh classics like Wye valley asparagus, mushroom scotch quails egg, paprika sauce , Mutton sausage, lentils, spinach, feta , Middle White pork loin, belly, cheek, hispi cabbage, apple, Duck breast, leg, brioche, red onion, chicory, gratin potatoes and not so Welsh desserts as Alphonso mango kulfi, coconut rice pudding and Vanilla crème brûlée and ariguette strawberries/ Before or after you follow in the Reverend’s footsteps, whether by foot, boat, canoe, kayak or SUP.
In the earliest days of package holidays and river cruising , tourists brought along sketching pads, telescopes, pockets editions of the Complete Works of William Cowper and some Claude glasses.
The Claude Glass was a convex mirror which the reflected landscape, so that detail was lost except in the foreground, helping painters to simplify what they saw. Many tourists used the glasses to manipulate the scene: a sunrise glass when used at midday gave a dawn view. As Gilpin wrote, “the Picturesque practice always involved some ‘improvement’ of the landscape.”
But don’t take all his advice. Infamously, he once suggested that “a mallet judiciously used” might render the insufficiently ruinous gable of Tintern Abbey more picturesque.”