Scenic touring and tips on appreciating ‘the picturesque’ nature of travel

Romantic travel writer and artist William Gilpin gives tips on how to get the most out of ‘scenic touring’ in his 1794 piece ‘On Picturesque Travel’ that are just as relevant to travel now as they were over 200 years ago:
1. Seek out novel experiences and new destinations.
"The first source of amusement to the picturesque traveller is the pursuit of his object – the expectation of new scenes continually opening, and arising to his view… Under this circumstance the mind is kept constantly in an agreeable suspense... Every distant horizon promises something new…”
2. Take time to take it all in.
“After the pursuit we are gratified with the attainment of the object. Our amusement… arises from the employment of the mind in examining the beautiful scenes we have found. Sometimes we examine them under the idea of a whole: we admire the composition, the colouring, and the light, in one comprehensive view.”
3. Allow your senses to be assaulted!
"We are most delighted when some grand scene… rising before the eye, strikes us beyond the power of thought… and every mental operation is suspended… an enthusiastic sensation of pleasure overspreads it… the general idea of the scene makes an impression, before any appeal is made to the judgment. We rather feel, than survey it."
4. Make meaning from the experience.
“Our next amusement arises from enlarging and correcting our general stock of ideas. The variety of nature is such that new objects, and new combinations of them, are continually adding something to our fund, and enlarging our collection… the same kind of object occurring frequently is seen under various shapes, and makes us... more learned in nature.”
5. Let one experience enrich the next...
"We are, in some degree, also amused by the very visions of fancy itself. Often, when slumber has half closed the eye, and shut out all the objects of sense, especially after the enjoyment of some splendid scene; the imagination, active and alert, collects it's scattered ideas, transposes, combines, and shifts them into a thousand forms, producing such exquisite scenes, such sublime arrangements, such glow, and harmony of colouring, such brilliant lights, such depth, and clearness of shadow, as equally foil description..."
6. Start dreaming about new places to see all over again.

Guidebooks to ‘the picturesque’: creating a new generation of traveller

Travel writer, artist, teacher, and reverend, William Gilpin obsessively collected drawings and sketched, and, as a student at Oxford in 1748, self-published ‘A Dialogue upon the Gardens at Stow in Buckinghamshire’. With practical tips for travellers on how they could get the most out of their visits to the country and best enjoy the scenery, the book was probably the world’s first travel guide. A unique combination of guidebook and reflective essay on aesthetics, it explored Gilpin’s ideas to do with ‘the picturesque’. A mad fan of landscapes – the craggier, more rugged and wilder, the better – Gilpin ruminated on the beauty of nature and perception in a way that hadn’t been done before. In his ‘Essay on Prints’ on landscape painting, published 20 years later, Gilpin defined ‘the picturesque’ as the kind of beauty that pleases us when we look at a painting, and formulated (often amusing) full-blown theories on picturesque beauty. Gilpin travelled widely during the 1760s and 1770s and on his trips began to apply his theories to what he was seeing, filling journals with sketches and thoughts, which he then circulated among friends. A decade later in 1782 Gilpin published ‘Observations on the River Wye’, based on a summer there, followed by ‘Observations on the Lake District and the West of England’, a guidebook series in the making… Both books were incredibly popular, inspiring people to travel to the English countryside simply for a spot of ‘scenic touring’, and to enjoy the landscapes in the ways Gilpin suggested – in much the way contemporary guidebooks direct us to today. When Gilpin’s readers travelled they too spent their time sketching and talking about their experiences in the way they might chat about visiting a gallery and the paintings they’d seen. I like to wonder whether Gilpin was created this new generation of traveller or whether he simply preached to the converted (no pun intended) and wrote for a readership of travellers like himself.