Our next stop on our recent road trip was in the historic town of Ross-On-Wye, a place neither Claire nor I had been before. The town was full of old historic buildings, so we spent a pleasant morning doing the online town trail. It was certainly a good way to get around the town and see all the sights, it was also good for spotting numerous chimneys as the photographs attest.

Ross-on-Wye is a market town and civil parish in Herefordshire, England, near the border with Wales. It had a population estimated at 10,978 in 2021. It lies in the south-east of the county, on the River Wye and on the northern edge of the Forest of Dean.

Ross-on-Wye promotes itself as “the birthplace of British tourism“. In 1745, the rector, Dr John Egerton, started taking friends on boat trips down the valley from his rectory at Ross. The Wye Valley‘s attraction was its river scenery, its precipitous landscapes, and its castles and abbeys, which were accessible to seekers of the “picturesque“. In 1782, William Gilpin’s book Observations on the River Wye was published, the first illustrated tour guide to be published in Britain. Once it had appeared, demand grew so much that by 1808 there were eight boats making regular excursions along the Wye, most of them hired from inns in Ross and Monmouth. By 1850, more than 20 visitors had published their own accounts of the Wye Tour, and the area was established as a tourist destination.