What Summer Holidays Actually Felt Like in 1970s Britain

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]You can still smell it if you think hard enough. Salt and vinegar and warm sand and something sweet from the arcade that you could never quite place. A week at the seaside with your family. That was a summer holiday in 1970s Britain and it all started the night before in the dark in your bedroom. You didn't sleep, not properly. You lay there staring at the ceiling and went through it all again.

[00:00:26]What it was going to look like, would the sun be out? Would it matter if it wasn't? The suitcase was already packed and standing on the landing. The holdall was by the front door with the towels rolled tight inside it. Everything had been ready since tea time and still you couldn't switch off. You woke before anyone called you. It wasn't even fully light but the house already felt different like it knew what was coming.

[00:00:52]By 6:00 in the morning, your dad was already outside. The roof rack was already on. Metal bars bolted across the top of the car. Bungee cords pulled tight with both hands, checked twice, then checked again at the end of the street. Everything roped and covered with a tarpaulin in case of rain and there would be rain. This was Britain.

[00:01:14]You planned for sun and packed for everything else. The boot was full before anyone had added their bag.

[00:01:21]Folded deck chairs with the canvas slightly faded from last year, windbreak poles, the cool box, the thermos flask, blankets and a carrier bag of things your mum had added at the last minute that nobody questioned. The rest went on top, around and between. There was no air conditioning. The vinyl seats stuck to bare legs in the heat. Three children sat across the back seat with no seatbelts, rolling sideways on every corner. Someone's elbow in your ribs, someone's foot on your ankle. Nobody thought twice about it. Your mum had the AA road atlas open on her lap, folded the wrong way. She was the navigator.

[00:02:03]Your dad was the pilot. Somewhere near a roundabout on the A road, they'd have a quiet disagreement about the turning they'd just missed and then it was fine.

[00:02:13]The thermos came out at the first lay-by. Not a service station, just a gravel patch beside a busy A road with lorries flying past. Tea poured into the Bakelite cup on top. Sandwiches from the cool box that your mum had made the night before. Cheese and pickle, ham, egg, all wrapped in greaseproof paper and warm by now. But you didn't care.

[00:02:36]You ate them standing in the grass while your dad checked the roof rack again.

[00:02:41]Then it was back in the car with the I spy books and the number plate game.

[00:02:46]"Are we nearly there yet?" came from the back seat every 20 minutes. And then you noticed it. The land opened up, the air changed and someone in the back seat said it.

[00:02:56]>> [music] >> "I can smell the sea." That was it. The holiday had started. Where you stayed depended on who you were. Some families went to boarding houses, some to caravans, some to the holiday camps but the feeling of arriving was the same wherever you ended up. If it was a boarding house, the landlady was already at the door. She'd been expecting you and she was already assessing you. The hallway smelled of other people's fried breakfasts and furniture polish and something faintly damp. The rules were on a card behind the bedroom door.

[00:03:30]Breakfast at 8:00 sharp. No food in the rooms. Out by 10:00. Back no earlier than 5:00.

[00:03:37]>> [music] >> The room had a candlewick bedspread, a wardrobe that wouldn't close properly, a washbasin in the corner and a shared bathroom down the hall. Your mum had a quiet look around, didn't say much, put the suitcase on the bed and started unpacking. If it was a caravan, you knew the smell the moment you opened the door. Calor gas and old curtains and something warm and slightly sweet that just meant holiday. Everything inside was small. The fold-down table, the two-ring hob, curtains in orange and brown and condensation on the aluminum windows every morning before you'd even had your tea. The bunks were too short and too narrow but for one week a year, none of that mattered. If it was Butlin's or Pontins, the size of the place was what got you first. It was like a small town behind a fence with a pool, a ballroom, a funfair and a dining hall all in one place. You checked in, got your chalet number and walked down the long low block to your door. The walls were thin and the doors never quite shut properly but before you'd even put your bags down, the Redcoats were already at it. Cheerful from morning to night with a loudspeaker crackling away in the background that you stopped noticing by day two.

[00:04:57]Everything was about the beach. That's where you spent the day and you carried half the house down there with you. Down the steps, across the prom, onto the sand or the pebbles, loaded up like you were moving in and then the real work began. The windbreak. Your dad had carried it from the car and now he was going to put it up. Four wooden poles threaded through a strip of canvas. He hammered them in with the heel of his shoe or a rock he found nearby, getting redder in the face with each one. The wind caught it before the last pole was in. He started again. He stood back and looked at it. Pushed one pole a bit further down, looked again, adjusted the angle, stood there with his hands on his hips like he just finished building a house. 20 minutes every single day. The deck chairs went up next. Striped canvas either brought from home or hired for a few pence from the attendant. They folded the wrong way and caught your fingers every time. You sat in them slightly wrong for the entire week and never once complained. The tartan blanket went down on the sand alongside the cool box that kept nothing cool. The sandwiches were already warm and the cheese had picked up sand. You ate them anyway. Your dad sat in the deck chair with a knotted handkerchief on his head.

[00:06:19]That was his sun hat and he wore it like it was perfectly normal. So did every other dad on that beach. The sea was always cold. The British coast in July was never warm and nobody pretended it was. You walked in slowly. The cold passed your ankles, your knees, your waist. That moment just before it hit your chest and then a wave came and that was that. You ran in screaming and came out freezing, lips blue, teeth going.

[00:06:48]You wrapped the towel round you and stood there shivering and 10 minutes later you went back in because that's what you did on holiday. The lilo was inflated by lung power alone until you were dizzy. It always had a slow puncture. You drifted further from shore than you meant to and your mum started waving from the deck chair. You waved back. She waved harder so you paddled in. On the sand, the castle went up.

[00:07:16]Bucket and spade from Woolworths, bought new every year because last year's set was lost before you'd even got home. You dig a moat with channels running down to the water and press little paper flags from the rock shop into the turrets. You worked on it all afternoon and then the tide came in and your dad said, "That's the sea for you." as if he'd been expecting it the whole time. Rock pools kept you busy for hours. Crabs caught in a bucket, kept all afternoon and carefully put back at the end of the day. You'd lie flat on a rock with a net, completely still, watching something move in the water below. The donkeys walked the same route every time and turned at the same point every time.

[00:08:00]Each one had a name on a little brass plaque on the bridle. They didn't rush for anyone. Punch and Judy drew a crowd every afternoon. That squeaking voice, children screaming, "He's behind you!"

[00:08:13]at the top of their lungs and nobody ever questioned any of the violence. It was a show that hadn't changed in a century and didn't need to. Sun cream barely existed. Ambre Solaire if your family had it and nothing at all if they didn't. You burned on the first day and spent the rest of the week pink and peeling. Calamine lotion dabbed on with cotton wool at bedtime while you winced and your mum said, "You should have worn a shirt." And you went home with tan lines from your watch strap, your sandals and the neck of your t-shirt that lasted well into September. The ice cream van sat at the top of the beach and the queue never seemed to get shorter. A 99 with a flake pressed into it, already melting down your hand before you'd finished the first bite. A Fab if you wanted something on a stick.

[00:09:04]A Jubbly if you wanted the frozen triangle you bit the corner off. Your dad didn't buy one for himself and then ate a third of yours. The weather did what it wanted. You played on the beach in light rain because you hadn't come all this way to sit indoors. The wind came from nowhere and knocked the windbreak flat and your dad went back out and put it up again. But there were afternoons, real afternoons, when the sun came through and stayed and the sand was warm under your feet. Your mum would close her eyes and just sit there for a while. Eventually the tide or the cold or hunger won and you packed up. Sandy towels, damp shoes, everything back in the bag, back up the steps and back to the prom. You could smell the chip shop before you got to the door. Salt and vinegar and hot fat. You queued with everyone else and watched the fryer work. Chips in paper, scraps on top if you asked, and a battered sausage if there was enough change. You ate walking along the seawall while a seagull circled overhead and your dad fought one off with a rolled newspaper. The rock shop always smelled like pure sugar.

[00:10:15]Sticks of rock with the name of the town running all the way through them.

[00:10:19]Blackpool, Scarborough, Skegness, Rhyl.

[00:10:23]You bought one for your nan one for yourself and neither of you ever finished it. Candy floss came on a stick bigger than your head and it was gone in about four bites with your face sticky for the rest of the evening. Inside the amusement arcade, it was warm and loud and you never wanted to leave. Everyone ended up at the two pence coin pushers.

[00:10:44]You slid your tuppence in and watched it land on the shelf and inch the pile toward the edge and you could stand there for half an hour spending 20 pence and feel like you'd won something. The crane grabber closed on thin air every single time. And then there were the mechanical models in glass cases. A penny to make a little scene play out.

[00:11:05]Boxing matches and haunted graveyards and little executions. You'd walk the pier if there was one, right to the end and look back at the beach through the penny telescope to see if you could spot your family's windbreak. Evenings were different depending on where you were.

[00:11:22]At the camp, the ballroom filled up and the adults dressed slightly better than they had during the day. There'd be a host with a microphone calling the bingo numbers, the knobbly knees competition and the talent show. And every week, without fail, there was one child who was absolutely not going to perform and then absolutely performed. If you were staying in town, you walked along the seafront after dark with the arcades going full blast and the smell of donuts coming from somewhere. Back at the caravan, if that's where you were, it games at the fold-down table. Snap and rummy until someone got bored. And then the rain came because at some point in every week it rained. In a caravan, you could hear every drop and it was somehow the coziest night of the entire holiday.

[00:12:12]Then there were the smaller things. The things that nobody photographs but everybody remembers. You always sent a postcard bought on the first day, written on the second, posted on the third. Weather lovely. Wish you were here. It usually arrived home after you did. Your dad with the camera. A Kodak Instamatic or a 110 cartridge camera.

[00:12:34]Everyone gathered on the beach or outside the boarding house.

[00:12:38]>> [music] >> Squint into the sun. No, the other way.

[00:12:41]Right. Lovely. The photos came back a fortnight later developed at Boots. Half the pictures were of your thumb. There was crazy golf on the seafront. Your dad took it far too seriously. He lost a ball on hole seven and rolled his sleeve up to fish it out of the water. The boating lake where you hired pedal boats by the half hour and spent most of it going in circles. The morning weather check where your dad pulled the curtain back, looked at the sky and said, "We'll see." And then there was the souvenir.

[00:13:14]The shell covered box, the miniature lighthouse or the snow globe that leaked in the boot on the way home and left a ring on the parcel shelf that stayed there for years.

[00:13:24]>> [music] >> Sometime during the last full day, something changed. Nobody said anything but everybody knew. The packing started.

[00:13:32]Your mum counted towels. The suitcase was fuller than it had been on the way down. You went to the beach one last time but it wasn't quite the same. One last go on the two pence machine, one last walk along the pier, one last stick of rock for the journey. The drive home was quiet. You fell asleep somewhere on the motorway and woke up in your own street. Your mum said, "It'll be nice to sleep in your own bed." And she meant it. The next morning you woke up and for a second you didn't know where you were and then you did. Downstairs, the washing machine was already going. On the mantelpiece, there was a stick of rock nobody had finished and a shell from a rock pool. A week at the seaside with your family. That's all it was and it was enough. If any of that took you back, tell me in the comments. Where did your family go? What do you remember most? And if you know someone who needs to remember this, send it to them.

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