The Beckoning Horizon

Distant, mysterious, attractive: the limit of our visual surroundings here on Earth, a horizon is something particular to ourselves. Few can share the horizon we see, and if we move far it takes on a new shape. Like the mythical hoard of gold at the end of the rainbow it is always there but can never be reached. We can get to where we saw our horizon stood, but by then it will have moved, taken up a new line in order to taunt us as if saying ‘you can’t catch me’.

Horizons demand that they be crossed. Humans are usually curious. They are prone to believe that things are better in somewhere else. Peoples with an outward urge send their pioneers to find out. If reports come back about new opportunities in distant lands, new travellers will set off to conquer, trade or perhaps settle there. If they are successful another kind of traveller might follow: the leisure visitor, the tourist. These four represent the main kinds of travellers – the explorers, the conquerors, business people and tourists. To them, the horizon beckons them to travel, to enjoy whatever they can find beyond. This brief analysis will attempt to illustrate how tourism has been shaped by its influence.

These groups are not mutually exclusive. Explorers might trade, the conquerors enjoy rest and recuperation. Business people get time off for leisure, tourists …. well, tourists explore. That term conqueror is chosen deliberately, since this might mean military action, evangelism, political or economic expansion, maybe cultural activities. Creating the British Empire meant all of them in greater or lesser measure around the world. Business people and tourists followed in the footsteps of the soldiers, missionaries and imperial administrators. Do business travellers ‘conquer’? Yes – economically. Do tourists – leisure travellers – ‘conquer’? Yes – economically, by adding to trade, but also culturally, by bringing their own way and standard of life which local people at the destination might want to copy. And it works in reverse, the tourist returning home with souvenirs, goods and ideas that are absorbed into their own way of life, introducing new fashions and interest. Though of course the locals might reent the intrusive of an unpopular culture, resist and fight back.

That was always one of the main reasons for leisure travelling, for tourism. The Grand Tourist of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the young man sent to be educated in the ways of the world. He would return with paintings and prints, artefacts and written accounts of the ways of life of other countries and his own exploits while abroad. The spa and seaside visitor during those same years might have similar acquisitions: more important, he or she had socialised with other people similar to themselves but probably encountered others who were very different. Their transactions, whatever they might have been, had both direct and indirect educational value. During the nineteenth century church and educational groups such as those from the new Mechanics’ Institutes made day excursions to other towns, the countryside and the coast, introducing their members to a variety of new experiences. By the later part of the century they might be making longer journeys of a few days or more, perhaps in the company of Thomas Cook, John Frame, Sir Henry Lunn or T A Leonard, all pioneers of mass tourism who were inspired by ideas of education and improvement. Quentin Hogg had founded the Polytechnic Touring Association. In America, camping had become a popular activity in imitation of the wilderness pioneers, stimulated by the writings of Ernest Thompson Seton.


During the twentieth century there were more developments of an educational nature. Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts and Girl Guides Associations were important organisers of educational tourism. The Swedish Touring Club set up shelters and cabins about a bicycle ride apart soon after its founding in 1885. In Germany Richard Schirmann started a hostel for poor city schoolchildren to benefit from country travel, and the school excursion and later the school journey were both important in the country before the first world war. Kurt Hahn came to Britain to escape the Nazis, and founded not only Gordonstoun School in Scotland with a strong outdoor training element, but also, with Lawrence Holt, the Outward Bound system of adventure training centres. The Youth Hostels Association began its network of British hostels for low-cost travel in 1930. The United States saw a spreading of what is still called the ‘Chautauqua’ adult education movement which started to run residential courses in New York State in 1874, though most seem to have been at that date non-environmental subjects such as Bible knowledge, music and literature.

In the UK ‘formal’ education involving travel has a long history, but relatively less widely used. As long ago as the seventeenth century London apothecaries were taken ‘herbarizing’ into the country to be taught to recognise useful plants. Geology and botany were both taught in universities and incorporated field visits from the early nineteenth century. It was not until after the second world war that the new Field Studies Council starting setting up teaching centres and regional field courses, and counties such as Derbyshire began to open their own residential centres for schools to use. In 1957 Peter Lawrence organised his first canoeing trip for children, the basis of PGL Holidays. For adults interested in mountaineering, skiing and other outdoor pursuits commercial firms were established even earlier, some between the wars.

Even the appearance of some well known sun-and-sand holiday packages can be traced back to educational activities. The ‘traditional’ Butlins Holiday Camp started in Skegness in 1936 came forty years after tented encampments in Norfolk and the Isle of Man which were originally for politically- and religiously-minded gatherings of men to enjoy fellowship and discuss issues. Butlin added his famous redcoats to organise entertainment, but as a fairground concessionaire he was well placed to add rides and sideshows. Again, the indirect social education from his sports, dances and competitions must have been great for those who stayed in these camps.

More recently, ‘special interest tourism’ has become a term associated with niche marketing of, amongst other things, educational breaks and holidays on subjects ranging from architecture and music to painting and photography, wine-tasting and creative writing. For example, Ind Coope began its Leisure Learning programme based on weekends at its UK hotels in 1975, and Martin Randall started his cultural tours in 1988.

It is a measure of the way in which the industry now perceives tourism that content-based travel is seen as a niche operation. Most forms of tourism, as described above, stemmed from some kind of blend of informal education with a high measure of enjoyment. Many influences contributed to the growth of travel: the element of exploration, whether pioneering or personal, was one, a response by the curious human to the beckoning horizon which lay all around.

The discussion continues in "Crossing the Divide", accessed from the list at the left.

Left: school party in Staffordshire studying geology, 1964. Right: LeedsMet students on Gozo, 2004