James Plumptre's Britain: The journals of a tourist in the 1790s by James Plumptre (Author), Ian Ousby (Editor), John Julius Norwich (Preface)
`I am ashamed to think how much I travelled and to how little advantage to myself and others,' James Plumptre wrote in 1811, by then a middle-aged clergyman weighed down by the responsibilities of his rural parish, looking back on his record as a tourist in the 1790s.
This characteristically modest, self-doubting judgement is hardly fair on the youthful energy that had made him use every moment he could spare to set off, travelling on foot whenever possible but still managing to explore most corners of mainland Britain. And it slights the journals he kept, full of youthful enthusiasm for the simple life of the open road and the scenery of north Wales or the Lake District, packed with curiosity about ironworks and coalmines, country houses and antiquities, celebrities of the day and chance acquaintances made in local inns, where Plumptre often needed all his natural resilience in coping with the discomforts and accidents to which he was prone.
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