Two of my daughters and their three small children have been staying here this summer and have now returned home. This means I have time to get back to other things like writing this blog. Thinking about all the travelling done by our family when we visit each other has prompted me to revisit holidays and travel in the 50s and 60s.

As well as our annual family holiday and weekend visits to grandparents, we children had two other exciting days out to look forward to each year. One was the village outing and the other was the Sunday School trip. Both were arranged in a similar way and the same people went on the two trips – apart from the fact that the vicar only joined us on the Sunday School outing, not the village one.

A coach was booked and would be ready and waiting outside the village shop at 8am. Our local coach firm was Thomas Bros who also ran the school bus service.

   The photograph is not a Thomas Bros one but our coaches looked like this.

We always went to either Porthcawl or Barry Island. Or perhaps they are the two I liked best as they had permanent funfairs as well as beaches! All food for the whole day was packed up and taken with us, including flasks of drinks. The most we ever bought to eat whilst there was an ice-cream. There were not as many food outlets in those days and people didn’t have the money to buy cafe food all day for a whole family.

         Barry Island beach and fair.

Porthcawl beach and the funfair which was called Coney Beach.

So, a coach containing a whole village of mums and children and laden with bags of beachwear and food would set off for a day at the seaside. It was almost unbearably exciting. I’m sure it was terribly hard work for my mum! We sang songs on coaches and in cars in those days. These were not songs from the radio but songs which just seemed to be sung when travelling – many of them Welsh. Oes Gafr Eto? was one of my favourites. Crawshay Bailey was another one and I recently found out that the character in the song was a real person! He was was an English industrialist who became one of the great iron-masters of Wales in Victorian times.

At some point in the day we would walk into the town from the beach and funfair area. As we lived way out in the countryside, this was every bit as exciting as the sand and the rides. We would go to Woollies (F W Woolworth) and be in seventh heaven choosing pick and mix, cheap jewellery or toys to spend our pocket money on.

This is a 1950s Woollies – not necessarily one I’ve been in.

 I only ever saw Milady toffees in Woolworth’s.

As we sang and dozed our way back in the coach we were happy, sometimes sunburned – nobody knew much about sun protection then – and tired. It was always a Saturday. My dad would have had a whole day uninterrupted in his beloved garden.

This photograph is not a Thomas Bros one but our coaches looked like this.