Your holidays as a child.

We stayed in a ramshackle old caravan in Walton on the Naze and on the first of two occasions it rained most of the week. I still enjoyed it because it was a change from being at home. I expect children these days would be very disdainful of such a basic holiday but I think it has made me appreciate how wonderful it is to holiday in comfort.

My mother and father were not big on holidays. We had day trips, and the occasional week in a boarding house in Blackpool - out after breakfast and no return until the evening meal!! We went camping in a dormobil one year to Conway and Snowdonia which I enjoyed because I'd never seen mountains before, but my mother hated it so that was that! But the holiday I really enjoyed, when I was about ten, was to go and stay with a friend in their new house (which was then considered to be in the country, but is now a sprawling suburb). It was surrounded by cornfields, country lanes and woods, and the two of us ran wild every day for a week! It was glorious.

Never had a holiday as a child. Nor day trips. Saw the sea for the first time when I was 15 and a friend from school and her family took me to the seaside. I've made up for it though.

I only remember days out when I was young but I used to be sent 'to the country' which was my Aunt Eve and Uncle Bills house in a village near High Wycombe I spent the whole week with my cousin Barbara roaming the Common and local farmlands meeting her country friends and on Sunday we had to go to Sunday School. The meals were all eaten at the enormous wooden table in the kitchen and they were usually huge and delicious... we've recently got together my cousin and I and had such a love time reminiscing about those times.

My uncle had a caravan at Trecco Bay near Porthcawl.We drove past the site not long ago. All green lawns and regimented rows of identical caravans. When we holidayed there in the 50s, the caravans were all shapes and sizes and set down higgeldy- piggeldy in the dunes. They were gas lit and the hiss of the gas and the soft light was very soothin after a day on the beach. The toilets were dire. Black corrugated iron huts with 3 or 4 Elsan toilets. But the beach was beautiful, and Coney beach with the fun fair was a last night treat.
I have many very happy memories of those holidays

Whitsand Bay in Cornwall and what can only be described as a garden shed. I guess it was only 5 or so years after the war. Loved every second.

Ancient caravan at the back of Polzeath in Cornwall. Yes those gas lamps! Playing cards. Buying and flying a kite. First surf on my wooden surf board - hired of course couldn't afford to buy one. Making castles and walls to stop the sea, and watching the sea taking people unawares and making them and their possessions wet.

My parents took us on 3 week summer camping holidays round Europe - doesn't that sound great. Here is the reality....

- by the time we got to the corner of our road (or even before during the packing) my parents would be on the verge of divorce.
- we stopped off every night during the trip down to Switzerland or Italy and this involved putting up a large tent every night, taking down the "coffin" (i.e. large homemade wooden roofbox) which had no partitions, so we had to plough our way through a "soup" of cutlery, clothes etc. to find what we needed, and....yes, again they were on the verge of divorce.
- my mother would sit in the car threatening to get a plane home and leave Dad to finish the holiday - in spite of the fact that she was terrified of flying!

You are getting the picture! Our friends were jealous of our holidays - little did they know!! I hated every second of them! Maybe that is why I a not a great traveller!

my parents farmed. We never had summer holidays. We had a week skiing once when I was 7 with friends who lived in abroad. That was it until I was 19 and met my OH. His parents lived in Spain so then I had 17 yrs on the trot of going to stay with them and doing ALL the catering for an entire fortnight. Then I went on strike. OH and parents in law thought I was really enjoying cooking for everyone. I cannot believe it took me so long to put my foot down.

My parents didn't do holidays or day trips. I did have one holiday on a school trip which was wonderful.
My next holiday was as an adult. And I've made up for it

Day trips mainly, and now and then to Blackpool for two nights for 'the lights'.Once a caravan holiday near the beach.Money was tight.

North Wales for us. Barmouth. We didn't have a car, so it was either travelling with my uncle in his ancient Ford Popular, or by ourselves on the bus (3 changes). Once I was ill and being sick in a pink castle-shaped bucket all the way there.

The sea was quite dangerous in Barmouth, but there was loads of sea life to make up for it.

My mother spent the time moaning about the number of Brummies about. Every day we went to eat in Davy Jones' Locker, which is still going!

My parents were snobs, and thought Trecco Bay beneath them. Porthcawl was reserved for day trips, organised by the Street or Chapel.

Once we went on a day trip to Aberdovey. Beautiful place. I still love going there even now (dd has spent many a holiday there too).

Anyone else go to a British Rail camping coach? They were converted railway carriages and the bedrooms were in the former compartments with two very narrow beds either side. We went to one at Grange over Sands in 1957 and I can remember trains roaring through the station during the night and the whole carriage shaking and waking me up!

Gagagran I so wanted to go on holiday in a camping coach I quite fancied Butlins as well. Both holidays sounded so exciting to me as a child, but my mother wasn't having it.

We moved around a lot and usually had a weeks holiday, roughly every other year in a B&B or small hotel somewhere not too far from home. When we lived in London we went to Broadstairs, Carlisle, we went to Girvan, by the time we moved to Berkshire we had a car so went to Devon and Cornwall.

My first experience of Cornwall was a holiday with a friend when we were 18. I was mesmerised by the place. I had never seen sea so blue or villages so quaint. We stayed in a country inn near Penzance, and got up at five some mornings to go and pick breakfast mushrooms with the landlord's wife in dewy fields. I drank too much scrumpy one night, wandered into the village church and fell asleep during bell ringing practice. Someone poured me home!

A caravan on a farm near my aunt and uncle's house in Criccieth was a treat until we got our own touring caravan when I was ten.
We always headed inland, I vividly remember a cyclist passing us as dad coaxed our old car towing the caravan up a steep hill in Derbyshire!
Touring 'vans didn't have inside loos in those days and the memory of sitting on the chemical loo in the toilet tent outside the 'van desperately trying not to wee because I could hear someone walking nearby has stayed with me since
I've always lived on the coast, so spent almost every day of the school hols on the beach with mum while dad was working. I was (and still am) something of an expert sandcastle builder!

Whitsand Bay in Cornwall and what can only be described as a garden shed.
The last time we went there whitewave, we must have taken the wrong way down and it took ages!! I don't think I could tackle it nowadays, although I could probably get down to Tregantle.

Most holidays were either in a caravan or in a boarding house, North Wales (jelly fish in the sea at Colwyn Bay)), Blackpool, Bournemouth or Cornwall. We didn't have a car so went by coach or train, I used to love rushing out into the corridor at the first sight of the sea at Dawlish.

My parents always tried to give us a week in a hotel, with D,B&B. We stayed in various holiday "resorts". We went to Blackpool only once. The weather was terrible, wind and rain. It was so bad that on the Friday night they put the illuminations on early to try and make up for the awful weather.
The holiday I remember bestvwas when I was 16. We went to Scarborough with my Aunt, Uncle and two cousins. My cousin and I went out one night and tried to get into a nightclub. We dressed up in our finery, and put on loads of make up to try and look 18. It didnt work! We went to the cinema instead!

Caravan for a week that needed serious saving to achieve. Then promoted to a chalet, bungalow or houseboat, my favourite. Just the one week, mostly fun though as all meals were home cooked may not have been for my parents.

My mother twice took my brother and me from Kent to Llandudno, where her aunt lived. She conveniently ran a guest house there! I R beer bits and ounces of the holidays, going to Puffin Island on the ferry, seeing massive Portugese Man o War jelly fish, so we couldn't go in the sea, walking to a show on the pier, visiting the ??Alice in Wonderland park and so on. I also remember being taken to see South Pacific in what was probably my first trip to the cinema.

The only holiday my dad came on was a touring holiday when I was about 15, round the south of England. We went to Salisbury and Chichester but I don't recall where else.

We used to go to stay with friends at Hever in Kent for weekends or a few days and I used to love that. We'd go off for hours at a time and no one seemed to mind.

Argh, no edit function! My third sentence should read 'I remember bits and pieces'.

jalima do you remember the cafe? Tin trays with tea - even that involved a clamber. Lovely times.

All over the UK, but always involving a long drive with 3 kids in back seat with no seat belts. Lots of bouncing and climbing. No air conditioning or motorways, so windows down!
First time abroad was a train to Switzerland for a church group holiday and first encounter with a "continental quilt".

We usually went to Scotland to stay with Granny and Grandpa. Starting from London in the small hours. No motorway, so straight up the A1 to The Scotch Corner hotel, where we had breakfast in the dining room.
We would then arrive around mid afternoon
. Everyday was buckets and spades and a picnic on the beach, regardless of the weather! Funnily I can't remember it raining much!

We had a holiday in Sutton on Sea in about 1956. I was only three and can remember nothing about it though photos prove I was there. After that my parents took over the running of a pub which meant no more holidays.