Can you remember how you travelled to the continent pre 73?

Travellers cheques, some currency of the country/countries visiting.

The amount of cash was written in your passport. We travelled by train or coach then took a ferry to Ostend to join coach tours when I was a teenager.

Surely not in the 70’s!

Back in the 50’s there was a limit but I have no recollection of stating any amount when I went to France and Germany to au pair or to Switzerland to study in the 60’s

Plus I flew to Nice although I did opt for overnight trains to Stuttgart and also to Neuchâtel .
And yes, we took travellers cheques or currency as credit/debit cards were not available.

I was 2 when I was taken on my first holiday abroad. Portugal.

Was it under Harold Wilson that there was a limit on the amount of cash people could take away?

I could be wrong


But my Grandpa and Father had cash in their socks

Just found this

In 1966 the Labour Government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson restricted the amount of currency that British holidaymakers could take out of the country to £50 plus £15 in sterling cash.

I travelled to Milan by van sometime between 1966_ 1969.
I don't know how many times I sailed to Oostende in that time.
I was in France in 1968 when the students were rioting, very scary.
Much more exciting times. You felt as if you were travelling. Stopping at borders, showing your documents, changing money.
When you sailed into a foreign port in those days you couldn't leave the boat until customs had come aboard to check you.
I prefer those days of traveling in Europe. It gets a bit boring now, if I'm honest.
That's only my opinion of course ?

Travellers' cheques, cash, I remember it well, wonderful memories of a couple of months travelling around Europe aged 21 with my then boyfriend. Plus several holidays with a couple of friends before that time. Once in Italy, when a pound was worth something like a million lire or maybe it just seemed like it, we were given sweets instead of infinitesimal denominations of lire in the change.......those were the days!

1964 Bus from Edinburgh to London; train to Calais; ferry to Ostende; train to Basle (I think); train to Salzburg; five days in Salzkammergut; train to Vienna; five days in city; train to Innsbruck. 4 days in village on Brenner Pass. I don't remember any limit on the currency. Travel was booked through an agency and we arranged our own excursions from each base. As far as I can remember, I decided not to take the bus to Edinburgh but visited the airline office in Vienna and booked a flight from Heathrow which was my first ever flight!

I skipped off to France without a care in the world in the 1960s, aged 18, can't remember taking out travel insurance and didn't take much money as I didn't have much, anyway I was staying with a French family for quite some time looking after their children.
I must have stuffed some francs into my bag.

Later on, when I was older and wiser I took travellers' cheques.

I once brought back too much alcohol but customs were very kind and stocked it. I wrote to them before going through the next time and they had my bottle waiting for me.

Can you remember how we travelled abroad pre-Covid????

* MerylStreep*
I was living in Paris between school and uni in 1968 , (with the student riots). My parents read about it and sent a telegram telling me to come home ........I didn’t! I was having far too much fun.

BlueSky

Can you remember how we travelled abroad pre-Covid????

Indeed. We didn’t know how lucky we were!

I seem to have visited a few places just before riots or wars.

Wasn’t there a time when the UK was limited to taking out £60 (each?) abroad. Mind you, if it was in the 60’s under Harold Wilson (I seem to recall) that was a lot of money for most working class people. My parents. My mum earned £8 per week working full time in a factory.

Mum & dad took my sister and I to Sitges in Spain in 1967. Our first holiday abroad. Wonderful. We travelled on a sleeper through France (tiny beds, Gard du Nord) and the next day a train through Spain. We were 2nd class. 3rd class had farm workers and goats in the carriages.! Another world for a girl from Old Trafford.
?

We went to Tenerife for our honeymoon in 1968 and we had Vforms which meant we could only take £50 each which even in those days wasn’t much.

For quite a while there was a limit of £50 cash as I recall.

Not that that concerned me the first 2 times I went - school exchanges to France and Germany in the 60s at about 14 and 16. If I was given a tenner to spend, that would have been about it.

IIRC the return transport cost to Paris for the first trip was £9. I think we went by coach to whichever ferry it was, probably Dover, followed by the train to St Lazare.
My passport was a British Visitors’ passport, obtained from the Post Office for 7/6d!

I think the £50 limit for cash being taken out of the U.K. began in 1966, it was certainly there in 68 when I went to Switzerland, but I don’t remember them in 72/3. I remember driving round Europe in a 6month old car which kept breaking down, and as a result of paying out for repairs arriving back in England, with no money, no bank card on a Sarurday with no banks open. I think we arrived home driving on petrol fumes rather than petrol, and slept round the clock!

1965 Ferry to France; train to Milan; train to Brindisi; boat to Corfu (before their airport had been built and it was just like The Durrells - sigh); travelled around Greece then returned home by train via Yugoslavia as it was then.

When we moved to Belgium in 1970, we flew to Brussels but separately, as DH had to go before me and I followed a few months later with a very active three year old in tow! Our bank account had been transferred so I don’t remember currency restrictions being an issue. When we came home, with two children in tow, we drove, in a very small car, to Ostend and crossed to Dover, then drove from Dover through the night to to South Wales without having been able to have the headlights changed over so they weren’t lighting up very much of the road! Trying!

I went to Austria in 1967 coach to Dover then on the ferry to Ostend then we went in a minibus by road the rest of the way. Only allowed to take £50 Sterling out of the country. That journey took about 27 hrs if I remember correctly.

I went on my first ever holiday at 17 (never mind abroad) in about 1966/67. Me and a friend went to Cattolica in Italy. You were only allowed to take £50 with you. The holiday only cost £20- 25 for two weeks in a hotel flying on a prop plane from Manchester.

We shared a table each night with an older couple who talked our heads off. All we wanted to do was get the meal over with and go out into town. By the way, the meals were served to us each night. There was always what looked like a huge washing up bowl filled with tasteless cloudy liquid with some pasta in the bottom followed by some sort of mysterious meal. The best night was Thursdays I think when it was chewy steak.

We were talking one night about the £50 limit when he took a huge wad of money from his pocket saying “you don’t have to follow the rules, I don’t” or something like that. I ended up sending a telegram to my parents asking them to send me some money so I could buy a leather jacket, it came promptly and with no problems!

How wonderful was our joining the EU? We suddenly had so many benefits. Easy travel being just one.