The resort to PleasureTravelling is costly both in time and money, and the widespread ability to make excursions purely for recreation is a mark not only of an affluent but a technologically advanced society. The word ‘tourist’ entered the language in the late eighteenth century, and was often employed pejoratively, with the implication that a privilege of the social élite was being usurped by a more general public. In the nineteenth century the railways facilitated the package tour and the works outing, linking the pre-existing social aspects of holidays with an integral element of travel, and in the twentieth century the motorcar brought privacy and autonomy to leisure travel. Inevitably, the observer alters what is observed, and the effects of mass tourism on resort towns and fragile landscapes have profoundly changed the character of much of Britain. 
‘Rydalmere’, a drawing by Peter Holland engraved by Charles Rosenberg, published in Select views of the lakes in Cumberland, Westmoreland & Lancashire, Liverpool, 1792. Harley-Mason.b.132 
Sea-side, farmhouse & country lodgings, boarding houses and hotels, a booklet issued by the Great Northern Railway Company, one of many similar publications intended to assist and encourage holidaymakers. London, 1903. 1903.8.263 |
