Old fashioned Holidays

Sorry that was meant to be gransnetters not grans terms.

The bumper edition of the Bunty for me! Holiday money from grandparents and aunts and uncles. We always went to a boarding house when we were young.

I Spy or Observer books of 'things' - topics depended on where we were going. The ones where you crossed off seashells or trees (or whatever) when you spotted them.

We had lots of caravan holidays with day trips to tourist places nearby.

Caravans with sticky flypaper hanging from the ceiling.
Being travel sick
Mam buying tinned meat pies and tinned veg.
Mam sitting surrounded by the windbreak
Getting a new cardi so that I could wear my old cardi on the beach.
Getting a new plastic mac.
Getting sunburned.
Dad picking winkles and boiling them up back at the caravan.

I used to collect car registration numbers...maybe it was an eye spy book.

I remember as a child always camping. The same thing happened each time. We got to the camp site and I threw up! The bucket was always packed last, out first! I hate camping and would never go now ?

Saving pennies up all year.
Saving my best reading books for the holiday.
New sandals and socks.
New knitted cardigan.
Fish n chips on the beach.
Sending a postcard to my friend the minute I could.

My daughter (10) still quite likes an I-Spy book!!

Travelling by taxi then by train then by taxi. My Dad always travelled in a suit and tie and once we were on the train and moving he would take his tie off as a signal that the holiday had started and we would all cheer. Mum would collect canned food all year for the holiday and about a week before we went a huge black tin trunk would go off with all the canned food towels, bed linen and most of our clothes so that we could travel light on the train. It would be delivered to the caravan site office and dad would collect it from there. Going home, the trunk would be repacked with clothes and left at the office again for collection and it would arrive home about a week after us which would be the signal for a massive laundry session.

Always spent a fortnight at Granny's house in Fife. We went swimming at St Andrews, visited lots of relatives, crossing the Tay on the ferry - before the days of the road bridge. A relative hid pots of honey (from her own bees) for us to find in her garden and we spent a lot of time picking - and eating - berries in Granny's big garden where there was also a croquet lawn and a summer house where we could retire with a book, of which there were plenty to choose from.

My fave holiday was to a caravan my Gran had rented on the east coast. My parents weren’t there, just my cousins. My gran took me to the bingo with her and let me spend her winning tickets on a doll. She also let me buy bubblegum and have a go on the Penny waterfall slot machines. We ate fish and chips and played cards and it was total bliss.
We did have a bucket for a toilet though.

B & Bs where you had to leave after breakfast and stay out till teatime. Tinned grapefruit with a glacé cherry on top or fruit juice as your evening meal starter and a dish of ice cream with a wafer in for pudding. The circus and the ice show at Blackpool Tower - the coloured lights finale was magical. Sitting bored out of my skull by the floral clock in Morecambe while my parents read their newspapers from cover to cover. Having to go to the first aid tent when I was stung by a jellyfish, and again because I got tar (or was it oil?) on my legs at the beach - I don’t recall how!

My parents did not have a car until my sister was born, I was 13 at the time and she was the fourth child. I can remember going to the Isle of Man with me and my older sister sat on the back of our parents bikes - obviously not while on the ferry! We sent all our clothes ahead in a trunk which was waiting for us at the B&B. I used to get very upset as we approached a big hill in Port Erin as my sister, who sat on mums bike, was allowed to walk up it as mum could not cycle up with her weight in the child seat. My dad, being stronger, was able to ride up with me still strapped in on the back and I was so jealous!

Another holiday to The Lake District a few years later was made in our new motor bike and sidecar - bought to accommodate my baby brother. My mum sat pillion, my brother was in the carry cot squashed in the front seat surrounded by the luggage and my sister and I sat in the back seat. One year we went at Easter and for some unknown reason, my mum let us have an Easter Egg to eat during the journey. I managed to sit on some of my chocolate which stuck to the rear of my nylon trousers - looked like I had had an accident!

In the fifties we lived in Dorset. At holiday times we would go out for the day. Never to Weymouth beach - far too crowded, but further along the coast where few people went. Sometimes we'd go by train to Swanage, stopping at Corfe and then catching he boat back to Weymouth. My dad had a motor bike and he built a sidecar for the 4 of us children. i was the oldest and we would sit 2 x 2, with mum on the back of the bile. We had a very large wicker hamper and mum would make jellies in jars for each of us. We didn't have sandwiches but we'd stop somewhere and buy rolls and sliced meat. Mum was Welsh and she regularly made Welsh cakes on an old bakestone. Sometimes we went to visit her aunt and uncle who live in South Wales and we'd walk over the sand dunes to what were then isolated beaches. Long stretches of sand and rarely anyone else there. We'd pick whinberries on the way back to make a tart for supper.

Some holidays I spent with my grandparents who lived near Hampton Court so that was a regular visit, plus boat trips up stream to Windsor, trips to the Kensington museums and the Festival Ballet.

All this memories have stayed with me and I still enjoy those things - beaches with no one else on them, often out of season, visiting stately homes, museums and art galleries.

My sister and I always went to stay with Grandparents, who only lived about a half hour bus ride away. What fun we had, Grandad had a big allotment next door, helped him pick the soft fruit, he was also volunteer fire chief , took us down to the station, still had old helmets, and let us ring the rope bell. Nana used to tell me off for shaking up the milk, she lost her cream off the top, we had our own little oven in the shed that you could light with methylated spirits, under Grandads guidance of course. I remember a green and black bathroom, very Art Deco , and a Pianola in the parlour, which Nana used to let us play. A trip to Great Yarmouth on the Bus at the end of the week. Happy days.

Some lovely memories here. We sometimes rented a caravan but other times we had a farm holiday, just BnB in the farmhouse, often with other families staying there, too. We went for walks in the countryside or visited local attractions. We always looked forward to our annual fortnight away and Dad would collect chocolate bars and sweets in a 'holiday tuckbox' for weeks before we left. He had a very sweet tooth! We went to holiday camps, too, and it was just like Hi-de-Hi, the TV show. We stayed in a chalet and were woken up each morning by someone shouting on the tannoy announcing that breakfast was being served. We loved it all. Thanks, Mum and Dad.

I’m enjoying reading all these holiday memories. All our summer holidays were spent on my maternal grandparents farm in the west of Ireland.

We spent all day playing in the fields, collecting eggs, bottle feeding orphan lambs, helping to milk the cows etc.

My Gran made 2 large soda loaves and treacle bread in the open turf fire every day. She had a large butter churn and the cousins all stood in line to take turns of winding the handle for her while she made lovely fresh butter. Their field behind the house had a plentiful supply of spuds, cabbages, carrots, lettuce and onions. I’m sure it was a chore to go out in all weathers to dig up potatoes etc but on holiday it was a novelty and we just loved it.

No running water in the house, it was carried in buckets from a well half a mile along the road.

That was the only holiday I experienced till I was a teenager, we went every summer and I loved it. Ireland is still my favourite holiday destination and I go every year. Or at least I did before covid scuppered it for us.

My dad had a motorbike and side car but when he bought his first car, Morris Traveller, we went to the same B+B in Sennen, Cornwall for the same 2 weeks for 6 consecutive years starting in 1959.

It took him 10 hours to drive there from Derbyshire.

The owners, Mr and Mrs Waller became good friends of my parents. I remember them taking us to the airbase there to a fancy dress dance.

Our beach every day was Porthcurno. Almost deserted in the early 1960s.

Thank you for starting this thread beswitched. Lovely memories

Caravan at the back of Polzeath. We had our favourite spot on the beach which of course was far less crowded. We used to hire surf boards and windbreak. Buy pots of tea on a tin tray from the cafe and Kelly’s ice cream from the van driving around on the beach, my favourite was a cornet with a dollop of clotted cream on top.
Pasty for lunch.

A bus with wooden seats took us to Wadebridge or to Rock and across the river to Padstow. Or up to Port Isaac or Delabole - my home village.

We often used to go to Cornwall, in the days before the motorway, and I remember travelling during the night because it took so long. I'd have my pillow and blankets on the the back seat of Dad's old Ford Consul car, so I could sleep, along with lots of books and toys. It was always so exciting! We'd arrive early in the morning, and we'd book into a B&B, or onto a caravan site. Such happy memories.

When I was older, mum & dad started taking me abroad, but when we had our own children my husband & I couldn't afford to go abroad when they were little, so we went to Cornwall & Devon instead, and looking back, they are some of the happiest and fondest memories I have.

We never went on holiday, Dad had a small holding and the animals couldn’t be left.

My first proper holiday was a week at Butlins with a girlfriend after I started work. I was 17.

Back in the early fifties, my Dad would hire a holiday home in Jaywick. I was always permitted to invite a school friend to come with us to keep me company, also having my same age cousin (who came from a one-parent family).

My Dad would only stay the first week as he needed to get back to London to work. My poor Mum was left with us, we were instructed to help her. Our main job was to go to the Stand pipe to get fresh water each morning. The loo was outside and not attached to the mains, and was the home to a multitude of spiders etc.

We kids loved it there, would spend long summer days (in my memory it was always hot sunshine then), on the beach around 'Uncle Kens' beach 'theatre. Running in and out of the sea, picking our way between zillions of jellyfish, hiring one of the double cycle type thingies which could take three of us. Would stay for three or four weeks. Not sure how my Mum coped, the only thing on in the evening was the local pub - and my Mum was quiet, shy and tea total!!!! Sometimes we would go into Clacton to the show on the Pier.

We would all travel in my dad’s small car down to the south coast. We usually stopped in the New Forest for me to be sick. We stayed in a hotel in Sandbanks, before it became swanky. We became friends with the owners’ son who would come onto the beach with us.

There was a hut at the end of the garden which was for the kids to play in. I think there was a snooker table. We sometimes put on small shows where individuals did ‘a turn’. I can always remember my Dad reciting ‘There’s a one eyed yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu’.

As a treat would would go by bus to Forte’s in Bournemouth for a knickerbocker glory. ?

Caravan holidays. Picking mushrooms in the field for breakfast.
The smell of bacon wafting over the campsite
Long walks - me on my brothers’ shoulders
The smell of the gas mantles.
Picnics on the beach and sand between my toes.
The sound of rain on the roof.
Cosy and happy and warm.