Caravans, B&Bs, and seaside towns — before foreign travel became routine.
In the 1960s and 70s, for the majority of ‘Brits’, taking a holiday abroad was still something of a novelty. Far-off lands with exotic names were a dream holiday or not even thought about — they were out of reach. For most families, a summer holiday didn’t involve airports, passports, or sun loungers in exotic places only seen on a world map. Foreign travel happened, of course, but it was far from common, and holidays were shaped by cost, access, and habit.
The chances were that if you went overseas, you had money.
Instead, a British family holiday meant packing the car, catching a train, or boarding a coach and heading somewhere in Britain. It could be the countryside or more likely, a familiar holiday town that provided everything a family could want.
The big deal was a holiday by the seaside, at one of the country’s many resorts. Britain, with its long coastline and well-established holiday towns and industry, was where the vast majority of people spent their annual break. In many ways, British holiday trends were well set and predictable.
The Rise of the British Seaside Holiday
By the mid-20th century, Britain already had a strong tradition of domestic holidays. Since Victorian times, resorts like Blackpool, Margate, Brighton, Skegness, and Scarborough welcomed holidaymakers. By the 1960s, these towns were at their peak, packed with amusement parks, piers, theatres, arcades, and boarding houses.
Many factories and workplaces closed for set weeks, particularly in industrial towns, creating a shared “holiday season” when entire communities decamped at once. In the north of England, this was known as Wakes Week, which began during the Industrial Revolution.
For working families, the annual holiday was often the only extended break from work all year. Two weeks of summer, traditionally the first two weeks in July. As children, school holidays gave us a long summer holiday taht seemed to go on forever. I remember that it lasted about eight weeks, but those two weeks away, if we were lucky, were the big event of the summer.
Once I knew that a holiday to the seaside was planned, I would save my pocket money and everything that I had earned for those two weeks away. The call of the arcades, the slot machines, the chance to be a pinball wizard, or a hotshot on one of the gun machines was strong. Even the seaside bingo, much loved by grandparents, had its attraction. I counted the pennies, knowing that back then, a penny went a long way in the arcades.