Wye Tour

The Wye Tour was an excursion past and through a series of scenic buildings, natural phenomena, and factories located along the River Wye. It was a popular destination for British travellers from 1782 to around 1850, and reached its peak popularity during the Napoleonic Wars, when travel (especially the Grand Tour) to Continental Europe was not an option.

Although tourists had been travelling down the River Wye since the middle of the 18th century, the Wye Tour became a must-see series of destinations after the publication of William Gilpin’s Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales, etc. relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770, which established the Wye valley as an area rich in Picturesque scenes. After Observations was published in 1782, travellers from all across Britain flocked to Ross-on-Wye, typically used as a launching point for the Tour, and sailed downriver to Chepstow, the Tour's final destination, over a course of two days.

For British travellers unable to travel to continental Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, the Wye Tour became a replacement for the Grand Tour. In his Wye Tour (1818), Thomas Dudley Fosbroke compared the Wye Tour to the Grecian Tempe (he called the Tour “a portrait of the celebrated Grecian Tempe enlarged”), thereby elevating the Wye Tour “to the highest level of classical beauty”.

During the early 19th century, the popularity of the Wye and other Picturesque Tours skyrocketed. Thousands of tourists descended upon Ross-on-Wye each summer to take a Picturesque tour, and to appreciate scenery that the fastidious Gilpin had declared “properly Picturesque.” During this time, Wye Tourists (and seekers of the Picturesque in general) were widely lampooned by British caricaturists (e.g. William Combe’s The Adventures of Dr. Syntax, In Search of the Picturesque) and satirical poets, who mocked their ignorance of local customs, single-minded pursuit of Picturesque views, and disregard for one another. Despite this (frequently accurate) criticism, the popularity of the tour endured until the middle of the 19th century – well after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Picturesque fad. Wye Tour destinations like Tintern Abbey remain some of the most popular weekend destinations for British tourists to the present day

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