Your holidays as a child.

We always had one month by the lake- 2 weeks with mum and dad, and 2 weeks with mum alone. My brother and I were allowed to bring a friend each for part or all of the time- my older brother (15 years older from mum's first marriage came on his own). It was s shack more than a châlet- no electricity- no bathroom (we had the lake) ... and a 'casy' at the back. We kids slept in sleeping bags on lilos in the mezzanine under the roof. Brilliant. Same crowd every year- used to leave after Breakfast, return for quick lunch and then off again till supper, then off again till bedtime. Older ones looked after little ones- huge games all the time, fishing, boating, swimming- hardly saw the parents for 1 month- who never seemed to worry about us either. The best. my mum did suggest we go to Spain once for a change- riots from us kids- it was Portalban and nothing else would do (Portalban was the name of the village on Neuchâtel lake).

We went most years to north wales for the Potteries Wakes Weeks as they were called. This was when the pottery factories closed for two weeks for maintenance. I remember us catching a train, usually to Rhyl., it seemed like a mass exodus. Even the little shop at the bottom of our (slum) street used to bring a box of groceries.
The caravans were so basic but, as we lived in slums at home,it seemed all right. Can't have been much of a holiday for my poor parents.
All our neighbour's and families were round about too.
I remember visiting one lovely aunt and uncle's caravan and playing with our cousins. The girl had a fountain pen decorated with a Welsh lady. I SO wanted one so I reasoned that, if I hooked on the inside of my waist band and just forgot about it that would be all right! I was suitably surprised being undressed for bed and finding it-I suppose it went back.
I obviously have dishonest tendencies as, once in Blackpool, dear parents wouldn't buy me a bunch of those paper flags to put on top on our sandcastles so I walked around and took just one from every castle. . . .
I must have seen the error of my ways as I have been scrupulously honest since-good job seeing as I do legal accounts! Lol !

Oh Number please I remember those wretched knitted costumes. I remember wading out of the sea holding this enormous stretched costume as it gradually drained. And didn't they itch too!
I remember being badly sunburned once, big blisters on shoulders, no suncream or covered up with tee shirts. And fainting off the toilet when we got back to boarding house!

My holidays involved a lot of camping - Guide camp, Church camp and Folk camp.
My parents were members of the English Folk Dance and Song Society and two weeks at folk camp was the highlight of their year.

skweek1 's post reminded me about a week away at Guide camp, in 1959. We camped on the Mumbles in great big bell tents. It rained all week and the kitchen area resembled The Somme. Nobody had sleeping bags in those days and we slept in home-made bags made of old army blankets and nappy pins. A small stream sprang up one side of the tent and flowed out the other. The most memorably-awful part of the holiday was 'the lats' - long trenches dug by the farmer and surrounded by hessian screens and using them was a perilous affair involving squatting with one foot either side of the trench. I can still bring the smell to mind after all these years.
Left Guides shortly after.

We didn't really do holidays. As a forces family most of our holidays involved going back to Edinburgh so our parents could catch up with their parents. We did have a holiday in a caravan in St Tropez once in the early 60's-drove down from our RAF station in Germany. I developed the most dreadful tonsillitis and spent a week inside with a fan whilst my brother squawked outside about a cricket being in his tent.

As we lived in the W of Scotland, my mother thought that we should get a dose of East coast air, so ennervating in comparison with' west coast rot'.

I was a sickly child, and with the excitement of a holiday I got worse and was in bed for the first week, luckily my Ma had got a good landlady so she looked after me for a bit, when Mother looked after big bro, by the second week I was fine. and we all visited the lovely sands of Nairn.

Its so true about the balmy air of the West.

Ahh Barry island.

We lived in industrial South Wales, every summer meant a day trip to Barry or Porthcawl with the Chapel and one with the miners club , and were able to have an annual holiday on my aunt and uncle's farm , never went near a B&B .

never ever had a holiday as a child, no idea why, in fact thinking about it I dont ever remember my school friends having one either.

My mum and I spent 4 days in Weston Super Mare in August 1955 - I was 7) (dad stayed at home to run the chemist's shop). We stayed in a guest house and every night I played the piano to the elderly guests. The weather was revolting - cold and wet - but I still remember it, as the only holiday I ever had as a kid. Later went to Guide Camps and later still did trips to stay in France with family friends and Germany with school exchange/penpal. Corfu 1st honeymoon, Amsterdam 2nd (stayed in FIL's flat). Since then only a couple of local Jazz Festivals, the last about 25 years ago. Need holiday NOW!

I had one holiday in my childhood and that was a week in a caravan in Heacham east coast about 50 miles from where I live I was aged 4 ... I remember they had to call a doctor out to me as I has food poisoning my next holiday was age 18 when I went with some friends to Jersey.
We didn't have money for day trips either but I do remember very vaguely going to London with mum and dad for the coronation I talked to my dad in latter years about it and he couldn't remember going at all and said we d have never been able to afford that but I know we did and I remember sitting on my Dads shoulders to get a better view I have no one left to ask and no photos or anything to confirm it so I ll never know

I was extraordinarily lucky and a well-travelled child. My father worked in export and was also, probably not coincidentally, a gifted linguist so foreign travel was second nature for him. From the time I was five, the year my father bought a new car, we drove to Dover in the summer, caught the ferry to Boulogne, and just drove – through France, sometimes through Switzerland or Luxembourg or Germany – to Spain or Italy. We stopped in different towns and cities overnight and when we found somewhere that looked like fun for all the family, bearing in mind that there were two children and sometimes one or more of my aunts were with us, we checked into a hotel and stayed there until it was time to drive back to Boulogne.

It was very unusual to see other cars with GB number plates driving through Europe in the 1950s and we always tooted and waved when we did see them. We visited all sorts of extraordinary and fascinating place, from Chartres and Carcasonne to Pisa and Milan and Barcelona and Zaragoza. As a young child I had no fear of attempting a foreign language and, anyway, children can communicate in all sorts of ways. I remember endlessly playing a card game in the evenings with a bunch of children of various nationalities in Italy where the cards have cups and batons like a tarot pack. The rules were hugely complicated and we played it very fast – possibly three or four different nationalities. I remember swimming in a lake on a really hot day in the Alps and burning my feet in the hot sand of an Italian beach in Riccione. That's also where I had my first kiss – from a boy called Gilberto, but I think he only did it because his big brother Carlo was rather keen on my beautiful blonde elder sister.

The first time we went abroad, to Spain, we stayed in a tiny seaside village called Playa de Aro. There was one hotel on the minor road and a pine wood between the road and the endless golden beach. We had a siesta in the afternoon and dined Spanish-style late in the evening – that was my initiation into a lifelong love of both paella and seafood. No one spoke English, except us. We went back there when I was a teenager. The pine wood was gone, the road was a major artery and so many high-rise hotels had been built along the beach front that the golden sands were in shade from about four o'clock in the afternoon. We didn't stay.

My dad was in business, so no holidays for him, but I just remember a week in Fairbourne when I was 4. He drove my Mum (heavily pregnant I now realise)2 sisters (aged 2 & 8)and me there, stayed in the B & B for one night then went home and left us for the week and came back the following weekend. I know that it rained a lot, and there's very little to do in Fairbourne even today. I can't imagine how she coped!

Swanage for me and Mum more than once tho' I don't know how many times. Once in a caravan in a field where we were woken by the van rocking violently. Not an earthquake, just a cow with an itch to scratch. I remember the beach and how all the the children liked to play in the 'outfall' (sewerage?) on the beach. Yes I had a yellow ruched cossie that trapped the sand and itched abominably.
After Mum remarried we had at least one holiday, can't think exactly where, when my stepfather's niece (similar age to me) came too. We stayed in Mrs. Mann's b/h in an upstairs 'apartment'. Lovely lot of room to self-cater end do crayoning but the beds! Lumpy 'hammocks'. No chance of falling out or avoiding worst of the bumps.Still had a wonderful time.

My fathers job took him to the South Coast in the summer so my mother sister and I went with him and stayed in a hotel for six weeks either at Brighton or Bognor. We . went home tanned from playing on the beach all the time. No sun cream in the twenties and thirties. For his holiday in September we usually went to Devon

from aged 5 to 11 we went camping - just pull up at a farmhouse & ask if we could camp in a field. We did North Wales, Devon & Somerset & Scotland twice, east coast one year, west coast the next. Last holiday as a family was to Anglesey where we were on a camp site, I will always remember the day we were on the beach & site manager came looking for Mum & Dad, we had to go home as both my Granddads were in Hospital with Heart Attacks - so it was pack up & leave, thankfully both survived although one died a few weeks later & other lived with us & died when I was 16.

I never went on holiday with my parents again although they borrowed a towing caravan & I stayed home with Granddad.

Lots of happy memories of exploring this lovely country - so much to see & ever County is different

My Dad worked for the LMS railway and got a free pass for the whole family once a year. WE went by train all over England and Wales visiting coastal resorts. The he got the sailing bug and then we spent every holiday on the Norfolk Broads.
We children learned to sail and it was exciting but cramped in the cabin. Mum was frightened as she couldn't swim and there were lots of rows but then there were rows most days anyway.

Early 1961/2 I Remember holidays on the East Coast, Withernsea and a small place called Ulrome. My older sisters and brother allowed me to (probably under sufferance ) hang around with them, which for me,was exciting, as I would have been about 10yrs.There was a cafe that had a juke box, constantly playing Telstar by Tornadoes and Tell Laura I Love Her by Ricky Valance ( a tragic tale!) They still bring back memories on the rare occasion they are played on the radio. As it's been said, the caravan you stayed in was always the one that stood out from the rest, but not in a good way!!!

Tenby, Colwyn Bay, Nefyn, St Davids.

How I loved the Barmouth area. We had caravan holidays just a few miles away for several years and the weather never let us down (honestly!).

We never had a holiday when my Siblings and I were children as money was very tight. However, we did have a day at the seaside every summer. This may not sound very much, but to us, living in London it was tantamount to a second Xmas Day.?
Mum would make the sandwiches and the flasks of tea at the crack of dawn on the day itself and pack them into her large shopping bag along with a large tin of Orange juice which I remember had the most delicious, albeit slightly metallic taste.
We would all walk to the Coach stop where we would catch a Grey Green coach and begin our journey to the seaside. Southend was a popular destination.
I can still remember the excitement that I felt everytime I saw the sea for the first time on each trip.
Dad had to carry me over the pebbles to the sea as they hurt my bare feet and the whole family would have a paddle. Mum would always find a chunk of seaweed to bring home and hang on the garden wall as it was "good for predicting the weather".
The finale would be Fish and Chips followed by Strawberries and cream in the local Woolworths restaurant. This was followed by a visit to a shop to enable Mum to buy a cheap memento of our wonderful day out along with some sticks of rock.
It may have only been 1 day a year, but these trips were truly wonderful and I still treasure the memories more than 50 years later.
My Mum and Dad are no longer with us, but nevertheless, Thanks Mum and Dad for the truly happy memories.

Used to have a week in Margate in b&b in the early fifties and then later on in my early teens Clacton then Paignton in Devon.

Straight after the war, we went on holiday to Margate. We stayed in a boarding house, turned out after breakfast and not allowed to return until time for the evening meal, so Mum and Dad hired a beach hut for the week. There was rationing still, so Mum saved up jelly blocks all the year to take on holiday, and every evening she boiled a kettle on a little spirit stove and made a jelly for the next day---we thought that was real luxury.

I was a navy brat so until the age of 10 we were in various overseas locations like Malta, Aden and Gibralter , so a holiday was going home.

But my Mum got divorced when I was 10 and remarried and we then lived in Portsmouth. We didn't have a car so we went to Butlins at Bognor Regis for a week every year. We went by train and it was a huge adventure for us.

Even now my brother and sisters talk about what a fabulous time we had.