A love of the staycation – simply called a holiday until a few years ago – is not a new phenomenon, as Harry Mead discovered in the pages of a 19th Century book about a little known corner of the North York Moors
We are glad to learn there is a growing disposition among the English people to see something more of the fair spots of dear old England than has hitherto characterised them. May those who have spent much time and money on foreign travel have to reproach themselves no longer of being ignorant of their native land! Whatever caused English citizens, back in the 1870s, to want to discover more of their own country we can be certain it wasn’t coronavirus – or anything like it. But it is remarkable that the authors of this observation, foreshadowing the so-called staycation a century and a half later, based it on their exploration of a corner of their native land – indeed their native county, Yorkshire – that remains relatively obscure even today.