Literary Rambles in the Wye Valley: Romantic River Journey
1 - 15 September 2013
This tour is limited to 16 participants
Tour Highlights
Dr Shelley Meagher, former lecturer in Romanticism at Oxford University, leads you on morning rambles through the Wye Valley and afternoon excursions to explore key movements in English literature. In this valley, designated an area of outstanding beauty by UNESCO, boating tourists developed theories of the picturesque. Whilst 18th-century writers valued static perspectives, the Romantic poets believed that beauty and truth were revealed dynamically by walking in nature. We follow their footsteps and also cruise the river, contemplating the views they enjoyed and looking closely at their poetry. We investigate the influence of such theories in literature, gardening and art, gazing through shady, dappled-lit woods, across rolling green pastures with Hereford cows, into apple orchards and along the valley's clear, dark, tannin-coloured river and limestone gorges. We may see peregrine falcons, deer, and rare butterflies, and shall certainly feast on local ciders and produce at markets and riverside pubs. We also search for rare books at Hay-on-Wye.
The river runs through the Welsh marches, between England and Wales, a border contested from the time of the Celts to the Civil War. We walk on the Dyke that kept the Celts out of England. We inspect the Iron Age hill fort, Carleon Roman Fortress, and Norman Goodrich Castle and Chepstow Castle and explore the Georgian town of Newnham and Georgian banqueting house of Kymin. We visit the stately houses of Sufton Court and Repton Court, and at Blaenavon Industrial Landscape World Heritage site see how the industrial revolution transformed the region. We wander through Veddw and Shipley gardens and Capability Brown's landscape garden at Berrington Hall. We journey through Monmouth, home to Lord Nelson, birthplace of Henry V and scene of the Chartists' trial in 1840, Ross-on-Wye, with its Tudor marketplace and houses perched on cliffs overlooking the river, and Hereford, whose 11th century cathedral houses some of Britain's greatest medieval treasures, a 13th century map of the world and Britain's largest chained library.
We stay in Tintern, wandering by moonlight past the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey that inspired Wordsworth's most famous poem; in the picturesque village of Symonds Yat in the Forest of Dean straddling the Wye river within a few miles of the Welsh border; and finally in the cathedral city of Hereford.
15 DAYS Tintern (3 nights) • Symonds Yat (5 nights) • Hereford (6 nights)
