Do you remember charabanc trips to the seaside?

I enjoyed that too eirel.
Well, whenever charabancs were actually on the road we, as children, called coaches by that name. Our teachers and parents were brought up with charabancs and presumably went on calling them that, so that's what we heard.

Enjoying BBC4 'The Golden Age of Coach Travel'. Programme began with the real old charabancs, horse drawn and open to the weather. Great nostalgia for me when it got to the 1940s and 50s!

absent - me too!

DD3 took her children to Wicksteed a couple of weeks ago - they loved it!

I think I am too young to have travelled in a charabanc –and you have no idea how happy I am about that statement.

My point exactly, Penstemmon!

If their hey day was between the wars there would have some in use after the war. Ours had wooden slatted seats and was painted green. When thin upholstery was introduced it was quite posh. We did however live in darkest Cornwall and back then things were about 50 years behind the times

I think that the term charabanc has transferred from meaning a type of uncomfortable vehicle to being a type of outing!

In my mind it is a church, club or works social outing to the seaside usually but country picnics too!

You must be really quite elderly if you have been on an actual charabanc!

My grandma was old enough to have travelled in a proper charabanc, but she always referred to coaches as charabancs, old habits die hard.

"Char à bancs" was originally a horse drawn vehicle with bench seating across it. When the motorised versions came in the principle remained the same, but unlike a bus, there was no central aisle to walk down .
I appreciate our parents' generation might have referredto an early bus as a charabanc, but I was surprised by younger members' enthusiastic memories of something which might just have made it into the early 1950's but was essentially of the era between the wars.

I have a really old photo somewhere of my Mum on a charabanc work outing I think taken sometime in the 30s. Everyone was in their best clothes. Ladies in hats, men in suits. They were off to Torquay from Yeovil in Somerset. Even these days it would take a couple of hours. On the side of the charabanc was painted "maximum speed 8 miles per hour"!

And a char is a cart or wagon ( just looked it up.)

It sounds a bit french - banc in french means a kind of bench seat.

Could we explain what we mean by charabanc please?
I had to look it up as it is clearly not just another word for bus and found this

The heyday of the charabanc in Britain was between the First and Second World Wars, when it had been motorised but not yet fitted with any very effective shelter from the weather. Sometimes it was graced with a roof over the passenger seats but its sides often remained open to the elements or could be protected with inadequate curtains in inclement weather

So as far as I can make out, only bijou on her own admission, qualifies as being old enough to really remember charabanc trips per se

i don't think we had any outings when I was at school ('40s) but it didn't matter because we were within walking distance of the sea, so we went most days in summer. I also used to help the girl who kept the beach ponies to exercise them on the hard sand and in the sand dunes.
Later we used to get the bus to Tynemouth and go to the roller skating rink, or the outdoor swimming pool. Or Spanish City at Whitley Bay
Our favourite place was Collywell Bay with it's cliffs and rockpools.
I still miss the sea.
We went everywhere on our own, no adult supervision

Our Sunday school trip was to Bridlington (on Silverwing coaches). There was never any danger of sunburn or heatstroke as we never took our cardigans off. It was only when I married and came to Cornwall that I knew it was possible to be on the beach without freezing!

There was a model railway at Alton Towers too, was it in the house?

And the boating lake at Alton Towers!!

Tegan we went in 1977 and were very distressed to see the sealion in a very small tank and made a complaint. Apparently the place had just been sold for - A Theme Park!

I would like to go back but am not going to pay a lot of money to not visit the theme park and to see the gardens and pagoda.

It was still so simple in 1974 - such a pity that the garden valley is rarely visited not, with the pagoda, orangerie and stream down - but wonderful for those like me who had to accompany groups of older teeenagers (school trips) to get away from the noise and rides ...

School trips when I was a kid also included very long walks to the top of mountains for picnics- took all day! But my favourites were the ones by train to the Lake and a trip on the wonderful paddle steamer with the huge brass beam engine - and my mum's sweet beef and pork pies in flaky pastry. That paddle steamer has now been restored, so can't wait to go for trip on it this Summer- sadly the new engine is made out of steel rather than brass- but still ...

Yes; pagodas and rhodedendrons [sp]. Was the sea lion there then or was that later?

I also remember Alton Towers when one went for the gardens and not much else. This would be in the early 60's.

As a child in the late 40s we used to go to Wicksteed park Granjura I remember that they made equipment for municipal parks and the like and in those early days they used the park as advertising and a way of showing what they had to offer.

we used to go to Wicksteed park with our kids in the 70s- and before that to Alton Towers when we lived in the Potteries - when there was only the ruin of the old Hall and one merry-go-round ...

no- but charabanc trips to the local dale though- walking and taking it in turn on the charabanc which also carried the picnic- great fun.

My SIL used to put coconut oil on herself (as an adult, not as a child); it is now very popular for frying!

In the early sixties my mother used to smother me in Nivea Cream before I went in the sun. She always said that it must have worked as I never got sunburned. When I look back, thinking about that cream makes me wonder why I didn't actually fry in the sun. I think maybe the fact that as a youngster I had naturally olive skin was what saved me, not the Nivea.