In the footsteps of the Victorians on the Isle of Man

Steam trains, horse-drawn trams and glorious coastal paths are all part of the adventure on a new self-guided walking tour of the island On the shores of Douglas Bay, I could barely see the sand. Crammed on to the beach, on every available inch, were tourists bustling for the best spot. Luckily, I wasn’t there at the same time. I was looking at a black and white photograph taken some 135 years earlier, displayed in the Manx Museum in Douglas, the Isle of Man’s capital. When I’d stepped off the ferry earlier that day, the crescent-shaped beach was still there – but the crowds weren’t. The self-governing British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea has always been a haven for outsiders. From the early hunter-gatherers who ventured here in 6500BC, to the Irish Celts (who brought over Christianity in the fifth century) and Vikings who established Tynwald (one of the oldest continuous parliaments in the world) to the Victorian tourists who transformed it into a popular holiday destination. Tourism boomed after the advent of steamboats in the 1830s, bringing hundreds of thousands to the island. Visitor numbers rose from 60,000 a year in 1863 to 350,000 by 1887. Last year, there were 329,613