Ian Porter starts his talk with the coming of the railways and the rise of Thomas Cook, first in this country, and then further afield. This leads us into travel abroad including exotic trips to Egypt, and then we go on to the luxury of the Orient Express. The building of tunnels and roads abroad led to winter adventure trips to the likes of Chamonix. And then came the great age of the ocean liner. Between 1830 and 1850, an estimated 50,000 English men and women undertook travel abroad using steamship services and railways.
All these trips tended to include a lot of eating so then the wealthy headed to foreign spas to get that waistline down. And finally there was flight, first by plane and then by zeppelin, until a disaster and world politics ended the golden age of travel.
