Today the Guardian – or Grauniad, as we lovers of its many typos call it – recommends the lovely Devon village of Tavistock as “not rammed with tourists.” Is this a typo, a confusion (“honing in on this one”!) or an inspired invention?
I’ve read probably a dozen different articles in the past year or so worrying over the global tourist boom, and having been guilty of participation at many of the sites mentioned (Barcelona, Venice, St. Peter’s in Rome) I agree that it’s a problem. In the 1860s there were a few dozen gentlemen doing the Grand Tour; by the 1960s it was tens of thousands; the modern global boom in middle-class bucket-listing has turned the river into an Amazon. Couldn’t get to Michaelangelo’s Pieta through the forest of giggling selfie-sticks.
Rammed is about right.