Getting Away from it All British Passions on Film

The call of the sun. Irresistible.

From the outing to the seaside, to the package tour to the Costas,

holidays have always had a special place in the British imagination.

On holiday, adults become children. We commune with nature.

Cast away our cares, and we fall in love with

the promise of sun-kissed days and fun-filled nights.

We journeyed far, and not so far, to search for the idyll

of a decent beer or a nice cup of tea.

Come rain or come shine,

holidays have always been a very British love affair.

Britons have always sought escape from the tedium,

toil, or even tyranny of their working lives.

But before the 20th century, for most people, a week's respite

remained a near-impossible dream.

The Victorians popularised the day-trip to the seaside,

but for most of us, real, extended holidays

remained stubbornly out of reach.

Then, in the early 1880s, when Lancashire's mill owners

turned off their machinery, workers were allowed to take a week off.

The so-called Wakes weeks became a tradition that lasted

for more than half a century.

People had these collective holidays, so you went on holiday

with the people from your factory or even the people from your street.

The famous Wakes weeks

when almost an entire town would decamp en masse to the seaside.

The Mecca for these people has got to be Blackpool.

It was the working-class resort of choice.

New rail links connected the interior to the seaside.

Now, quickly and affordably,

Britons everywhere could reach the resorts.

Inland towns and cities were joined up

to particular places on the coast, so for example, Leicester was linked

to the Lincolnshire coast.

So places like Skegness, Mablethorpe.

And same with London,

if you lived in south London you might go to Brighton.

If you lived in East London, you'd go to Southend or Margate.

Originally, the Victorians visited the coast

for its healthy, curative air and morning dips in the sea.

But soon other attractions and entertainments emerged.

The end of the pier show had arrived.

The whole thing about the pier was that it actually allowed you

to walk on water.

You could feel like you were transported to another world.

Some of the pavilions where they had the shows, the variety acts

and the pierrots and music-hall things

were incredibly exotic in their design.

The seaside became a fantasy land where holidaymakers might

escape the humdrum and, for a while, experience the extraordinary.

But in the years ahead, the more adventurous would have

the opportunity to leave the coast and go out to sea.

So for three-and a-half days, we are cruising leisurely down

into the warm sunshine, a happy family party.

Interesting companionships develop. Some shipmates become soulmates.

And by the time we sight land, our cruise ship becomes friendship.

In the 1920s and '30s, more and more passenger ships

turned to cruising to meet the rising demand for glamorous holidays at sea.

The ship itself was luxurious.

It was no longer just a means of transport.

Sometimes the ship facilities would be more important

than the places that you were actually visiting.

Many sun-seekers crossed the Channel to the fashionable seaside

towns of Normandy, while the well-heeled went south

to the ultra-chic resorts of the French Riviera.

Only the wealthy can go to the French Riviera, so if you've got a tan,

that means you got some money, so it's very, very aspirational.

Having a tan is no longer associated with poverty and work outdoors,

but of a healthy lifestyle and also a leisured lifestyle.

Visitors to the Riviera would bring the latest French fads, fashions

and lifestyles back home to Britain.

It didn't matter that the temperature is not a patch on Nice

and Monte Carlo, they're sort of suspending their reality

for a short time and bringing a bit of the Riviera to the British seaside.

For most people, though, adventures in Europe were a pipe dream.

Instead, for over a century, thousands of city dwellers opted

for affordable working holidays in the hop fields of Kent and the Midlands.

In the 1940s, Sally Cridland's family travelled from their home

at Oldhill near Birmingham to the hop farms of Worcestershire.

You left the dirty factory type of environment that we lived in.

So it had to be a holiday, because you were going into the countryside.

The air was fresh, you could see trees.

There were no trees and fields around where we lived at all.

-Sing us a song, Dad.

-Sure!

# Alice in Wonderland thought she would go

# Into a laugh today cinema show... #

A lot of people say that communal singing

was part of the entertainment, and it's what made it a holiday.

So there was a sort of collectivity, being together which was important.

The agricultural labour of hop picking was by no means a break

from work, but generations still cherished the chance

to get away once a year.

Oh, what a difference to London.

I've come here to try and get that schoolgirl from Clacton.

People said that those that had come back from hop picking

looked healthier and more radiant

because they'd had several weeks out in the sunshine.

Perhaps they'd have looked better if they hadn't had to work as well,

but it was an improvement.

For years, the working holiday was one of the few affordable options

for British families.

But in the 1930s,

more and more people were able to get away for a proper break.

With the very much overdue introduction of holidays with pay,

not only the classes but the masses, to say nothing of the missus and kids,

will be having their first real holiday.

In 1938, the Holidays With Pay Act gave employees

the right to a week's paid leave.

Now 50 million Britons could get away from it all.

Yet at first, few could take advantage of their new entitlements.

A year after the Act was passed, Britain was at war.

Amid widespread fears of invasion, Britain's beaches were fenced off.

For six years, seaside holidays were put on hold.

But, after the Nazis were defeated,

families could return to Britain's beaches once again.

Two things Jill has dreamed about all her young life.

One is when Daddy comes home from fighting in the Far East,

and the other is today, her first trip to the seaside.

Is it as good as they say it is in the story books?

Well, this is the day to find out.

The day mother's kept her promise to take Jill to see the sea.

The little things, the pebbles, the rock pools,

she sees a crab for the first time.

There are the donkey rides, she has her first ice-cream,

but it's the whole package.

It's the sunshine on the beach and being able to wiggle your toes

in the sand for the first time

and feeling the waves crashing against your legs.

That's just wonderful.

Post-war day-trippers made up for lost time,

and in droves they headed back to the seaside.

There was usually a lot of drink on the bus.

They were quite a rowdy bunch. A lot of them are middle-aged women.

They're not young and fancy free, but they've got the day off.

No husbands, no kids, no work,

and they're jolly well going to have a good time.

My old woman went on a day-trip to Southend last Monday.

She left me at home to do all the smalls with only half a bar of caper.

Imagine how I felt turning the old mangle

while she was gallivanting about on Southend prom.

# Into each life some rain must fall... #

Come rain or shine, the trip to the seaside was associated

with fun, freedom and laughter.

This was a generation that was undeterred by the vagaries of the British weather.

We grew up in homes without central heating,

so the idea of swimming in the North Sea wasn't that ludicrous.

And we were used to being out in the wind and the weather too,

so there was no hardship.

That was good, blustery stuff.

If they were fortunate they would have free activities

of the beach, the swimming, making sandcastles and so on,

but if it was raining then they'd have to find something else to do.

Indoor entertainments were too expensive for many holidaymakers.

And for guests at the traditional seaside boarding house,

staying indoors wasn't necessarily an alternative.

There was definitely the stereotypical landlady

who sort of came down in her carpet slippers and curlers

and bossed you about and was probably quite rude.

She took your money, but you didn't get very much in return

beyond that bed.

Once breakfast was finished,

you would have to leave the boarding house.

The door would be locked behind you. You don't have a key.

And, obviously,

if you have the misfortune to have a wet week in Bognor,

then it is really quite unfortunate because there's no provision.

The landlady won't say, "Oh, it's raining.

Just come in and spend some time in your room."

But, by the Fifties, there was one popular holiday institution

that always offered a warm welcome to its guests.

Hello, everyone.

This is Beryl, your Radio Butlin announcer wishing you

a very good morning.

Now, holiday camps were dotted along the British coastline.

After further improvements in paid leave entitlements,

the holiday camp business was booming.

Operators like Butlin's delighted visitors by offering

private chalets and indoor amusements

as well as all the fun of the seaside.

To illustrate our point, we go now to a holiday camp in Clacton

and at the same time introduce a new sport, pram racing.

Which, as you can see, has its share of hazards for the inexperienced.

Camp proprietor Billy Butlin created a technicolour playground

for children and adults alike.

Ever present were the Redcoats,

who did all they could to deliver on the promise

of Butlin's famous motto.

"Our true intent is all for your delight."

It sounds twee.

But he meant it, and followed it up

and you, as his employees,

had to follow that up.

You had to sell that. No other message, that was it.

"Our true intent is all for YOUR delight."

'At our holiday camp, however,

'you might be asked to volunteer, army fashion,

'even if you don't know a trampoline from a trombone and don't want to,

'in which case your luck is right out.'

Although you encouraged people to join in, you didn't coerce anybody to join.

Well, occasionally, you'd drag them in.

And if they ran away and didn't want to bother,

then, you'd let them go.

But you did bring them out. And they thanked you for that

when you brought them out and gave them a bit of confidence.

Willingly or not, campers were roped

into all kinds of harebrained stunts, games and challenges.

There was a competition for everyone.

The camps celebrated knobbly knees,

beautiful eyes

and even the chopstick dance.

In the camps, no craze was too crazy,

no activity too outlandish.

'Oh, no! We've heard of crazes, but this is ridiculous.'

You can't do underwater twisting in Sutton Coldfield,

but you can do it if you go to your Butlin's camp.

So they're looking for a new experience that, you know,

Mrs Welthorpe next door has never had.

At the camps, British holidaymakers found fun, freedom and peace of mind

in a safe, comfortable environment.

They seemed to offer the complete holiday solution.

# Shine on, harvest moon

# For me and my gal. #

It was a transposition of the entire family into an encampment.

You wouldn't go out of it. Everything was provided.

And the idea of everything being provided was just wonderful.

'Based on the American-designed track at Disneyland,

'this holiday high-riding monorail

'has caught the imagination of young and old.

'Germany and Japan already have commuter tracks to ease road congestion.

'So Britain can't afford to wait too long before taking the plunge.'

Butlin wants people to keep coming back year after year

and he's very conscious of the need to provide them with something different,

so he had a dedicated workshop, which made all these rides in Skegness.

And so, he's not just being innovative in the holiday camps market,

he's been innovative just generally

in the kind of things that he's bringing in from abroad.

'The Western atmosphere has been recreated here

'in a Clacton holiday camp.

'And there's no doubt it's an idea which really ropes the customers in.'

In the time they spent aboard the monorail or at the themed bars,

campers could imagine they were in lands far away.

'On the railway stations, they used to tell us Skegness was bracing,

'but they never warned us

'we might expect a tropical storm as bracing as this.'

THUNDER

The Beachcomber Bar had this amazing facility

that you could sit in the bar

and be in a tropical storm

and then, suddenly, the sun would come out.

And this happened sort of every half hour or something.

The jovial atmosphere was doggedly maintained by the Redcoats,

whose sunny demeanour often lasted way beyond the summer months.

You find yourself later, after the season,

walking down the main street in a town

and you realise they're all looking at you very strangely

because you're grinning from ear to ear and saying hello to everybody,

because you've been doing that for 16 weeks.

And you can't get out of it. You've been to smile school.

But that was the joy of it, it was wonderful.

The holiday camp helped to establish the tradition

of the collective British holiday,

a tradition that survives to this day.

But some British holidaymakers were desperate

to escape the pre-packaged mass-market experience

and find their very own route to holiday heaven.

People suddenly realised

what a gorgeous, wonderful country Britain was.

And the landscape began to impress itself on people.

And there was nothing better than to have your own car and drive around.

It was just thrilling and exceptional to what we had known.

By the '60s, many Britons sought escape via the open road

and dreamt of discovering remote and forgotten corners of their homeland.

The harder it is to get somewhere,

then, the more it appeals to a certain type of holidaymaker.

In an age of mass ownership of the motorcar,

the joys of the great British camping and caravanning holiday

were available to millions.

For the pioneers, rural Britain was like a new frontier.

There's a kind of romance to camping and caravanning holidays,

but putting the holiday camp behind you

and the kind of, the crowded Blackpool beach

and going off on your own,

and the freedom of the open road

and going off and spending a week sitting in a caravan

with hail pouring down outside the windows, endlessly playing Ludo.

Early camping holidays tended to appeal

to the more stoical and plucky side of the British spirit.

The idea that being outdoors is good for you is quite a new thing.

And I suppose that's all tied up with having more leisure time available to take advantage of it.

It's also about cycling, it's about hiking in the mountains

and you take your tent with you.

This is really the beginnings of camping becoming a popular pastime.

For some holidaymakers,

the '60s caravanning experience was reminiscent of the time

when train companies offered a cheap alternative to seaside lodgings

by renting out disused converted railway carriages

parked off the beaten track.

'A coach makes a grand holiday villa.

'Especially fitted up for domestic occupation,

'it's roomy and bright inside

'with everything laid on for Mother's comfort.'

Camping coaches were introduced by some of the railway companies.

They would convert them so that they were like a luxury caravan

and then tow them to a siding,

perhaps near the seaside or in the countryside,

and then leave it there for a week

and the holidaymaker could rent the carriage

and live in it for their holiday.

By the early 1960s,

there were 75,000 drivers towing caravans on Britain's roads.

Even as they ventured into ever more unfamiliar territory,

many were determined to take along a little bit of home.

One of the weird things about the British and their holidays

is that for all we talk about going away and escaping,

when we go there, we want it actually to be just like home.

So in the caravans, people want to kind of recreate the atmosphere

of the kind of suburban semi -

the hearth, the knick-knacks over the fireplace,

all that kind of thing.

It's the exoticism of the escape but with the reassurance of the familiar at the same time.

'Salute British ingenuity, behold the ubiquitous mobile home,

'a two-wheeled tribute to the British spirit of adaptability

'and to the great and growing pastime of messing about in caravans.'

In our desperate quest to stand out from the crowd,

we made some most unusual holiday choices.

'But, as ever, there's more to it than that.

'A family in Lancashire has built a caravan that's also a boat.

'And you don't need an amphicar to get it afloat.

'You just park by the river, forget about your car

'and take to the waves.'

People actually buy into ideas like the caraboat,

the amphibious caravan that look completely bonkers to our eyes.

That you would actually sort of park your caravan on the slipway,

and then get in, make a cup of tea on the Primus stove

and steer it like it's a boat.

It does look completely bizarre to our eyes.

But I think it was just part of that general enthusiasm

that people were willing to try this.

It's all a bit James Bond.

But I think what it testifies to it's this sort of new spirit

of doing something different from the people next door,

of doing something a little bit wacky, almost.

And all that that reflects, of course, is rising affluence,

you know, in a newly affluent society,

people are keen to mark themselves out as individuals

and not to be a part of the great mass

going to Billy Butlin's camp at Bognor or something,

to be different.

'Goodbye, England. You wave and you're off for the day.

'Off to the continent for a day of wine and wonders

'and back in time for a goodnight cup of cocoa.'

If British holidaymakers aspired to one thing,

it was to join the privileged ranks of the continental traveller.

Going abroad was a completely new experience for most people

in the days before mass air travel,

when the continent seemed much further away.

Just going on the boat, on the ferry to France would be an exciting adventure.

It was very important to have a passport.

It was a navy blue one in those days, with lots of royal seals on it.

And you felt proud to be British. That's what you were proud of.

You wanted your passport to be inspected.

You wanted people to know. You wanted to brandish it.

For the holidaymakers of the mid 1950s,

the arrival of the cross-channel ferry seemed to open a pathway to another world.

'On the beach, it's the same old sun that shines down on Blackpool,

'but there's something here that makes it just that little bit different.

'Maybe it was the wine you had with your lunch... Oh, sorry, dejeuner.'

You couldn't imagine anything more exotic. It would be like going to Tibet today.

It was so exotic. I mean, the French, they ate on the street.

They had tables and chairs and they had coffee, lots of coffee.

We had... I'd only had tea.

The continent held the allure of fine wine,

exotic cuisine and constant sunshine.

But it didn't always live up to its mystique.

To go to the south of France or go to Italy,

they have no conception of them,

of what it would you like when they get there.

And they are surprised and they're shocked by the heat and the light

and the smells of the kind of food.

Obviously, it's terribly disappointing and upsetting to a lot of people - pasta, garlic.

The sheer level of kind of difference

makes the continent both very alluring and a little bit frightening to people, I think, in the '50s.

In the jet age, as cheap air travel became a reality,

millions of Britons seeking fun in the sun

started saving for new mass-market foreign package holidays.

Sally Cridland was a single mother in her late 20s

when she and her three friends boarded a package flight to Majorca in 1967.

She joined increasing numbers of British tourists

getting their first taste of a foreign holiday.

I thought I was the bee's knees, to be honest with you.

SHE LAUGHS

I really did.

You know, the four of us, we, we had a drink at the airport

and got on that flight

and you could have a drink on the flight, naturally, in those days.

And, also, you could smoke.

So, of course, on the flight, it was, we were on our way.

And it was a great feeling.

I don't think I've ever felt the same from any flight,

wherever I've been all over the world since that first time.

'On behalf of Captain Bromley and the rest of the crew,

'we do hope that you enjoyed your flight with us this morning

'and we wish you all a very enjoyable holiday.'

The wine was naff, to be honest,

the food was too greasy.

But, other than that, the sunshine made up for it.

Oh! Four girls going off on their own, just divorced.

They are off for a good time. Well, we did have a good time.

THEY SING

People wanted life, wanted vigorous night life.

They wanted to be jolly all the time

and so the evening entertainment mattered a lot.

# Espana por favor

# Ole! #

As well as late nights, the package tour

offered modern accommodation with creature comforts

unknown on holidays back home.

You had your own bathroom. That was revolutionary.

You had your own balcony overlooking the sea.

A tower block in the Costa Brava - bliss.

The Spanish resorts would become a home from home for Britons abroad.

Part of the appeal was the cost.

British tour operators now offered cheap, all-inclusive package deals

to attract new, lower income holidaymakers.

The travel company might provide a free barbecue, free wine,

free cigars and, when people were paying for a holiday,

they had all these things included with it.

Obviously, they want to get the full value for their money.

And so, if something is offered, they took it.

When they go to Benidorm,

the idea of completely fending for themselves is alien to them.

The expect things to be laid on for their money.

It kind of is the ethos of the holiday camp,

but transplanted 500 miles to the south.

With the Spanish package holiday came guaranteed sunshine.

And, as the British learned to shed their inhibitions,

the sun tan became an indispensable badge of honour.

It was very important to come back with a good tan, a very good tan.

You hadn't got long to get it,

so there was the rite of passage

that was for two days you got hideously sunburnt.

You'd never heard of suncream before.

You just went and, really, you wanted to get sunburnt

so people would know you'd been in the sun.

You got red and you blistered some time.

And then, all began to flake off,

so it was a sort of ordeal by toasting, really,

until you were just as you wanted to be

and then it was time to come home.

And the first thing, you know, people would say,

"Where have you been?"

You know, "Where did you get that colour?"

By 1990, British holidaymakers were taking 31 million foreign trips a year.

Cheap package deals to places like Benidorm

were now as British as fish and chips.

During the past century,

we've had conflicting attitudes to the idea of travel.

We've cherished distinctive individualised getaways

and embraced the mass-market package experience.

We've craved adventures abroad,

but have been wary of the unfamiliar once we're there.

Yet Britons have an unswerving love of holiday making...

..our long history of collective wanderlust suggests

that when we are away, we're very much at home.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd