Memories of the Potters Holidays by Bob Adams

I remember when the holidays were first changed in 1968 from first Monday in August to June/July. This was because traditionally August was one of the wettest months of the year and also the nights were drawing in. It was also cheaper to go on holiday then.
How different things are today when young children have already visited foreign climes and travelled to many countries as sailors used to do. As a boy in the late forties through to the sixties I can remember the holidays I took with my parents, sister and brother.

We were fortunate because many could not afford to go and the seaside was a treat. A daytrip was all some could manage and they were lucky as their parents had not even managed that. The resorts which we frequented most often were Rhyl, New Brighton and the Mecca of it all, Blackpool.

Blackpool was different. It never closed, it was brash and it cocked a nose to the establishment. Mum and Dad however weren’t struck on Blackpool. “Your money goes too quick there, you’ll be spent up in no time.”

So we went to Fleetwood, just a few miles further North, a fishing town and a very nice place to go for a week or, if you were well off, two weeks. As the holiday drew near, the atmosphere at home changed; get out the old tin trunk to put all our clothes in, no suitcases for us. The trunk was picked up by horse and carriage by British Rail a few days before we went.

It took two trains and we finally arrived itching to be out looking round. Count your spending money, some were threepenny bits my gramma had saved in a jam jar for me to get an ice cream. Walk along the prom and catch the ferry to Knott End just across the river for a few pence. Call at the kipper shop and send kippers by post to those who were not with us. It was cheap to do that then, the kipper shop is still with us in 2007, but unless you are wealthy the postage is prohibitive and as the post delivery goes these days you’re here and talking to your friends and their kippers haven’t even arrived yet.

Of course we would go down to Blackpool by train, this again was a novelty. See the beach packed with the mums and dads, asleep in the thousands of deckchairs and a hankie over their heads for a sunhat. Watch the men fetch trays of tea all in cups and saucers made in Stoke-on-Trent.

It always made me smile that lots and lots of people would go away to get away from it all, but just go for a short walk and you would bump into all those that you had gone away from – sometimes it was as if you were back home apart from the sea.