What I did on my holidays (a long time ago)

One of the standard tasks that traditionally faced children when they returned to school in September was to write an essay called ‘What I did on my holidays’. I remember writing several such essays - what I do not remember at all well are the holidays that were their subject-matter. My earliest memory is from a holiday in North Wales when I was two. I remember being led by the hand over a railway line. My parents had rented a cottage with another family, but I recall none of that.

The first holiday I really remember was in Brynmill, in a boarding-house by the seaside just to the West of Swansea City Centre. This was particularly exciting for a small boy because getting to the beach involved crossing the Swansea and Mumbles tramway, and then passing under a tunnel which carried the British Railways branch line to Mumbles. To make things even more exciting, we were warned about a nearby unexploded bomb, left over from the War.

After that, family holidays involved trips to the seaside in North Devon. I can not remember how many times we went, but I do recall the ordeal of getting there. My father was an industrial worker, and therefore had the same two week break in August as the rest of Birmingham and the West Midlands. Each city in Britain had its usual holiday destination, and for Birmingham this was Weston-super-Mare and points further South-West. This meant that the holiday fortnight began with a massive migration in the same general direction by train, bus and car. My parents did not own a car until I was about 16, but for holidays they either shared a car with friends, or hired a car. There were no motorways, and all main roads led from one high street to another. Travel therefore involved a sequence of traffic jams of a scale completely unknown today, even with four times as many vehicles on the road as in the 1950s. Strangely, the worst such jam was on one of the few by-pass routes, around Exeter. Cars might wait here for hours - thirsty motorists brewed up tea by the roadside, while salesmen walked along the queues of cars selling ice-cream. Journeys were also prolonged because the cars of the time were unreliable. As a result, a trip to North Devon from the family home in Shirley near Birmingham could take from early morning to nightfall. I remember one journey ending one night as the car we were travelling in broke down trying to climb Porlock Hill in Somerset.

Our holidays in North Devon included a stay in (I think) a boarding house in the attractive village of Combe Martin. But later, we stayed in caravans further along the coast near Woolacombe. I did not like caravan sites, with their grubby toilets and showers, while some sites involved a long walk along the edge of muddy fields to get to the beach. Once on the beach, we spent our time doing very little. We made sand-castles, swam in the sea and used surfboards. It never occurred to us to stand on them. As I got older, I became bored with beach holidays. I remember wandering into the cinema in Woolacombe by myself to see Carry on Nurse. I was much taken with Shirley Eaton, and remember a growing frustration that I did not have a Shirley Eaton of my own.

In my later teenage years, our holidays changed after my parents bought a car. However, they were not intrepid travellers, and the limit of their ambition was to visit Scotland, which they regarded rather as Australians view the outback. This focussed particularly on touring what they called the ‘real Scotland’, by which they meant the Western Highlands. They were thereby immune to the glories of Edinburgh or the wonderful scenery of the Borders. While travelling in Scotland, my parents developed what in hindsight seems a strange daily routine. After a full fried breakfast, we would drive on the next stages of our tour and eat sandwiches for lunch. After a further drive, there would be a search for a bed and breakfast for the night. After that, we would drive to some lay-by or parking place and cook a meal on a primus stove, using food from tins. We had several windswept and generally unsatisfactory meals by this method.

After I finished my A-levels, I went on holiday by myself, although I did travel again with my parents once or twice thereafter. I do not of course write any essays on what I have done on my holidays, but I store photographs and retain the urge to write the occasional blog post about my travels.