Thomas Cook's idea to offer excursions had…

Thomas Cook's idea to offer excursions had come to him while "walking from Market Harborough to Leicester to attend a meeting of the Temperance Society".

With the opening of the extended Midland Counties Railway, the Leicester businessman arranges to take a group of temperance campaigners from Leicester Campbell Street railway station to a teetotal rally in Loughborough, eleven miles away.

On July 5, 1841, Thomas Cook escorts around five hundred people, who pay one shilling each for the return train journey, on his first excursion.

During the following three summers he plans and conducts outings for local temperance societies and Sunday school children.
 
On August 4, 1845 he arranges for a party to travel from Leicester to Liverpool.

In 1846, he takes three hundred and fifty people from Leicester on a tour of Scotland.

In 1851 he arranges for one hundred and fifty thousand people to travel to the Great Exhibition in London.

Four years later, he will plan his first excursion abroad, in which he will take two groups on a 'grand circular tour' of Belgium, Germany and France, ending in Paris for the Exhibition.

During the 1860s he will take parties to Switzerland, Italy, Egypt and the United States.