VERDANT VALLEY
“If you have never navigated the Wye, you have seen nothing,’ cleric, artist and writer William Gilpin wrote with unwavering confidence in Observations on the River Wye, first published in 1782. Lauded as the birthplace of British tourism, the tranquil landscape of the Wye Valley – a magical borderland straddling England and Wales that covers the southernmost reaches of the Wye’s journey to the Severn Estuary – has entranced visitors ever since. Among them, Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who followed in Gilpin’s footsteps on Britain’s first ever package holiday: a pleasure cruise from Ross-on-Wye to Chepstow to take in the ‘picturesque’ valley, a word coined by Gilpin to describe the ostensible theatre-set scenery.
Fifty years ago, the verdant region incorporating the Georgians’ ‘Wye tour’ was quite rightly designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty,
