BEFORE cheap airline travel, holidays used to be profoundly disappointing. Here are some of the classic lowlights from 80s family trips.
Waiting for the AA on the hard shoulder
An 80s holiday wasn’t complete without your parents’ Ford Granada breaking down. No mobiles either, so your dad had to traipse a mile up the motorway to the emergency phone.
Visiting a windswept beach
Not a sheltered cove with powdery sand and crystal water, but a huge, bleak vista where the sea was half a mile away and you had a wind tan within five minutes.
Donkey rides
Who was sadder, the donkeys trudging miserably up and down the beach or the kids riding them who’d rather be in the arcade? Hard to say.
Staying at your nan’s
A week at Nan’s house and being forced to eat faggots and watch Take The High Road wasn’t a holiday, it was torture.
Local natural history museum
Full of creepy things like jars of pickled animals and drawers of butterflies pinned to cardboard.
Local agricultural museum
Less creepy but way more boring. How could there be an entire museum dedicated to 18th century seed drills? And why did your dad make you visit it?
Sitting in a car park
Of course it was absolutely pissing it down every day you went to the beach. You were in Morecambe, not the Costa del Sol.
Wasting your money in the amusement arcades
You dreamed of the amusements all year round, but within 12 minutes you’d spent all your holiday money losing at OutRun.
Tent in a field
You went to sleep freezing and woke up as soon as the sun rose at 5am, then spent the next few hours lying in what was basically a hotbox of your dad’s farts.
Sandwiches in a lay-by
There was no Bill’s or Zizzi in the 80s. Instead, you ate sweaty cheese and Marmite sandwiches in a dual carriageway lay-by while lorries whizzed past.
Board games in a caravan
North Wales has some of Europe’s finest medieval castles. And you never saw any of them because it was lashing with rain and you were trapped in a caravan playing Boggle for six days.
Peeling off your sunburnt skin
No one thought about skin cancer in the 80s, so you’d get sunburnt on day one and spend the rest of the holiday having a competition with your siblings to see who could peel off the largest intact bit of skin.
Renting a deckchair
Your dad rented a chair for him and your mother, while you were relegated to a damp, sand-covered blanket.
Chips stolen by seagulls
Good chips were the one upside of an 80s seaside holiday and a prick of a seagull always ruined it by attacking you. You don’t get that on Crete.
Disappointing petting zoo
A sheep and two guinea pigs do not count as a ‘zoo’. But your mum wanted you to get your money’s worth as she’d shelled out two quid each for the pleasure.
Tedious history tour
Your parents were obsessed with a Roman road and your holiday consisted of a week in the car driving it. You wondered what it would feel like to literally die of boredom.
