HOW NATURE BECAME A PLACE TO ESCAPE TO

In 1804, the first steam locomotive journey was made in the industrial town of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. It took nearly two hours to travel nine miles, but it may as well have been lightning speed given the revolution it inspired. By the middle of the century, hundreds of millions of British passengers, as well as goods and food, were rattling around by train and the barrier between rural and urban was effectively obliterated.

‘I wandered lonely