From Sussex to Scotland, my road trip through four centuries of British holidays

Annabelle Thorpe found Rannoch Moor in the Scottish Highlands to be one of the most atmospheric landscapes on her road trip. Photograph: Justin Paget/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenAnnabelle Thorpe found Rannoch Moor in the Scottish Highlands to be one of the most atmospheric landscapes on her road trip. Photograph: Justin Paget/Getty ImagesFrom Sussex to Scotland, my road trip through four centuries of British holidaysA 1,600-mile journey to the wild peaks of Scotland, via Llandudno’s Victorian promenade and the bright lights of Blackpool proved an eye-opener in more ways than oneOne of my favourite recent photographs is of me (unusually), perched on the bonnet of our car, about to set off on a solo, two-week road trip from our Sussex home to the wilds of Scotland, taking in Eryri (Snowdonia), Lancashire, the Lake District and Yorkshire.

I had no idea that the research trip I was about to embark on – for my book, which traces the story of British holidays over 400 years – was going to reveal my homeland as somewhere I barely knew.As a southerner, it was the northern half of Britain that I needed to discover. I’d stitched together my route with visits to museums, archives and classic seaside resorts that had once blazed so brightly.

I’d visited Cumbria before, but the Conwy coast, the Lancashire countryside, Blackpool, Morecambe, Scarborough? All these were unknowns.My first stop was Eryri, where it turned out my hotel, the Royal Oak in Betws-y-Coed, had been welcoming artists such as JMW Turner since the late 18th century.

Fifty years later, it became the hub of the country’s first artists’ colony, drawn here by the dramatic beauty of the dense, bottle-green swathes of the Gwydir Forest and the spectacular peaks of the Glyderau range and Moel Siabod.View image in fullscreenLlandudno has one of the most complete Victorian promenades in the UK. Photograph: James Clarke/AlamyOver coffee, hotel manager Katie Valentine told me about the artists who called the area home – David Cox, Henry Clarence Whaite and Thomas Collier among others – at least until Betws railway station opened in 1868.

“At that point,” she said, “many moved to houses further up the valley, grumbling that the place was becoming flooded with tourists.” As I would discover on this journey, it seems overtourism is far from a contemporary travel trend.From Eryri, it was a short hop to Llandudno, a beach town so pristine it felt a little like a Victorian theme park resort.

“In some ways it is,” Judith Phillips, trustee of the Llandudno Museum, told me. “The family who built Llandudno in the mid-19th century – the Mostyns – still own much of it now, and control everything from what colours people can paint their hotels to what businesses are allowed on the promenade.”The Llandudno Museum made plain that much of our history is not in the great city museums, but in libraries, archives and small museums on quiet high streets, often run by passionate volunteers with an encyclopaedic knowledge of their local heritage.

Driving from Llandudno up to Lancashire along the North Wales Expressway, I whipped in and out of tunnels, emerging to see great swathes of the cobalt-blue Irish Sea stretching to the horizon.Further into my journey, I was pointed towards early editions of the very first guidebooks to the Lake District, written by Thomas West and William Wordsworth, at the Armitt Library in Ambleside; shown handwritten letters by Queen Victoria at Blair Castle (including her personal recipe for potato salad); and told wonderful stories of Wakes Week holidays in Blackpool by the dapper Richard Croisdale at Blackburn Museum – their longest-serving volunteer, at a sprightly 90 years old.View image in fullscreenAnnabelle Thorpe drove up from Sussex to the Highlands via north Wales and Lancashire.

Photograph: Annabelle ThorpeBlackburn’s grandiose Victorian museum and Bolton’s neoclassical town hall stand as legacies of the era when Lancashire towns were affluent manufacturing bases home to tens of thousands of factory workers. The Georgian streets of Richmond are like a mini Bath, but steeped in Yorkshire heritage. But perhaps nowhere confounded my expectations more than Blackpool.

Arriving on a Friday night, the promenade buzzed with lights and life; the illuminations blazing all the way to the tower, kids skipping along the seafront entirely unaware they had been brought to one of the most deprived towns in the country. “We are a town of extremes,” said Claire Smith, co-owner of the chic Number One South Beach B&B. “We have pockets of absolute joy next to complete caverns of woe.

There’s no blending. It’s either amazing or awful.”Claire and husband Mark shared stories of Blackpool in the 1970s, not least his coming back from the pub as a teenager to find his parents had let his bedroom – along with their own – to guests, leaving them to sleep in the lounge.

This was the era when guests queued in their dressing gowns to use the bathrooms, landladies locked