1827 - ‘distinctly known and properly appreciated’

A tour to the Lakes looked different yet again under the direction of Cumbrian writer Jonathan Otley’s ‘popular science’ guide to the geology, mineralogy, and meteorology of the Lakes for tourists. Between 1823 and 1850, Otley’s ‘little manual’ for the public, as he called it, went through eight editions.

This third edition of 1827 added an excursion to the top of Skiddaw, the fourth highest mountain in the region. Here Otley takes on the picturesque: 'The value of a prospect of this kind, is not found in straining the eye to see a something that the imagination may convert…it consists in viewing such objects as can be distinctly known and properly appreciated’.

Jonathan Otley, A Concise Description of the English lakes, 3rd ed. 1827.