Childhood Holidays

fastwunz

fastwunz

fastwunz

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So I would be interested to get opinions from people who have done this.

when I was growing up, I, like many famlies, used to pile into the Vauxhall Omega Estate with my mum and dad and two brothers and make the exciting drive via the ferry to Brittany - GB sticker on the back and those awesome stickers on your headlights that made them turn orange.

from there we would drive to a campsite and stay in a caravan for two weeks.

i have the most fantastic memories from between age 08-15 in particular:

holiday romances where I swear I was in love (one girl called holly who I still think about to this day)
Hot sunshine
Amazing food, steak hache and frites
French bread with amazing jam for breakfast
Crepes covered in Nutella
Late night kids discos and stealing french lager your dad bought from the super Marche
On site arcade games and the lovely 1F coins (euros just arent the same)
Playing in the pool until you were told to leave
Walks through the Brittany pine forests to amazing beaches (Beg Meil in particular if anyone knows it) where we would spend the day playing in the sea, reading comics, getting ice creams and fizzy drinks from the beach cafes
Bike rides through the woods and along sandy paths
Awesome thunder storms that lit up the sky with rain that could flatten anything but you played in it and got soaked anyway because it was WARM rain
Shivering cold when you got out of the pool and the warm towel your mum wraps around you
Sweeping all the sand out of the caravan
Watching mum and dad consume large chilled jugs of rose and being allowed a little to taste
Lovely smelling sun tan lotion that you HAD to wear or you weren’t allowed out to play
A complete sense of freedom and peace - not a worry in the world

I could go on.

as I have gotten older (the wrong side of 35 now) and I have children of my own, I keep wondering if I should return to these places (Camping L’Atlantique in Fousenant primarily if anyone knows it) in order to recapture the magic.

or is the magic just that? Magic held in a child’s memories to be cherished but not experienced again?

I’m terrified that if I do make it back one day I’ll hate it and it will be ruined for me.

has anyone returned and had happy experiences or otherwise? Please share

thanks
 
I miss going on holiday with family and friends when I was a young kid. We never really went too far afield (usually in the UK) but I have some great memories of staying in various B&Bs, hotels and such, Butlin's a few times which actually seemed really good at that age.

Swimming in the sea, burying your mates in the sand and playing arcades on the seafront were great.

I think those places have all changed a fair bit now and I'd risk ruining my memories too if I went back. I've travelled a fair bit but some of my happiest holiday memories are still from my youth. :)

Looks like staycations might become a thing so you never know, I might cave. :D I really don't mind holidays in the UK because flying is such a massive faff anyway.
 
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Always had caravan holidays in England when I was growing up.

Used to go to the West Country a lot. The three counties of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall are still my most favourite places in the world.
 
I went up to Seahouses a few times for caravan holidays in my youth, absolutely loved the place and it's surrounded by interesting places to see. Going fishing, visiting local castles and ruins, eating freshly caught seafood most days.

There were two big arcades we'd go to of an evening after a trip to the pub.

Honestly, I think any issues you might personally have wont bother you at all when you see your kids having a good time.
 
It was the era, it honestly won’t be the same now.

But your kids will have their own set of experiences and memories that to them might be just as important.
 
My parents and I used to travel down south to Torquay, Devon, and Weymouth, Dorset.

We've been in caravans and hotels.

I remember wearing a vest on one holiday and getting prickly heat.

Anyone remember playing at the amusement arcades? On the games there. I bet most have shut down these days.
 
I personally can't stand caravan parks or basically anywhere that has kids discos or activity centres but that's just me. As others have said the era for them has gone somewhat so you may find they're not up to the 'standard' you expect or remember

One thing I have really fond memories of though is camping, and that hasn't changed much because the fundamentals can't really if you go fairly basic. Similar memories, just a tent.

The National Trust campsites in the UK have kept things simple but clean/good toilets and showers etc without ruining them with kids clubs and concrete leisure facilities. Open fires by your tent, swimming in lakes right by your door, chatting under torchlight etc.

If you're interested, and when the time comes to it, I'd highly recommend Low Wray in the Lake District.
 
Used to camp all the time with parents, various bits of France and the UK. Was great at the time but not going to subject my kids to the hells of camping when you could have a nice villa and a pool somewhere. :D
 
Went on a bus to Spain with my folks when I was younger. A memorable journey that we met some fantastic people that we ended up spending our holiday hanging around with. 18 years later I was back on the bus heading to the same destination on my lonesome. While obviously I could have flown, it was just as cheap, it had to be the bus heading to the same place. Never did meet the same kind of people like before it was mainly older folk, but the place hadn't changed, very much the rural coast like a lot of small british towns.

Glad I did it though I love the place, calella de palafrugell, though next time id probably fly:)
 
We usually did UK holidays, camping or in a caravan at a Haven site or, when I was under-10, Butlins.

Enjoyed all of those.

A couple of times, my parents saved extra hard to go to Brittany and stay in one of the pre-erected tents at a Eurocamp. First time I enjoyed a bit, age 13/14 ish, though it wasn't as good as the UK holidays, but second time at 15/16 I hated it, desperately didn't want to go, begged them to leave me at home and spent the whole time seething about being there.

With those memories, I'll not be taking my kids :D
 
robfosters said:
Always had caravan holidays in England when I was growing up.

Used to go to the West Country a lot. The three counties of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall are still my most favourite places in the world.
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Me too. New Forest many times, Cornwall twice, Norfolk, Yorkshire & the Lake district spring to mind. My folks liked it back then too, so much so they bought another Caravan about 4 years ago & they have it in storage at a site in East Kent, when they want to go for a short stay, a phone call later its towed onto a pitch for them. A PITA for me as dad is getting too old to put up the awning so I have to drive there & back just to help them set up before I have to go back to work. Because of lockdown they cant do that & Its driving the pair of them up the wall. On a weekend with weather like this they'd be staying there now.
 
Caravan and camping has been the thing i have done with my kids (a seasonal pitch in St Agnes before i moved here) Haven sites on the east coast (im from Yorkshire) ,but my mum and dad were and still are into nice hotels ,we used to go to St annes quite a bit ,fly down to Jersey ,poole harbour area ,europe in general ,always an amazing Hotel usually with a nights entertainment that ended with the parents getting up for a waltz or a quickstep ,my dad was a lecturer but had a sideline in architecture that gave us free holidays in robin hoods bay also .
 
We used to go on static caravan holidays when we were kids. We visited the same holiday park just outside Dawlish Warren in Devon several years in a row and I absolutely loved it. We would go out for the day to a local town or attraction, come back to the park in time for a dip in the pool before it closed and then back to the van for some dinner before heading down the club in the evening to watch the cheesy entertainment and probably play some games of pool and mess about on the amusements. When the day came to leave I used to cry as I didn’t want to go home. Quite often my brother and I would come home with pen pals. I’m showing my age now!

I’ve been back to the park a couple of times as an adult and back to the English Riviera almost every year since I started driving and the long term plan is to move to that area in the next couple of years. I always feel relaxed there and I put that down to the happy childhood holidays I spent there. It still makes me smile to think back to those days.

We had one foreign holiday as a family. My Mum had breast cancer very young and my Dad was told there was a good chance we would lose her so they took us abroad in case it was the only chance we ever had (we were lucky and she is still with us) however it’s the UK holidays that really stick in my memory.
 
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We pretty much always went to Devon, mainly the south and then the north as i got older, and usually stayed in a self catering apartment. (We never went to places that had the activity areas for kids and we were never fussed about Butlins)
There were a lot of great memories made and i did go back to Paignton when i was 19 and 25 maybe, only to find it wasn't quite the same, enjoyable experience.

That said we did expand our childhood holidays a little by having a couple in Blackpool :D it was great fun. My mum would put us in our pj's, put our duvets over us and give us a pillow each so we could sleep on the drive up.

Back in 2018 I had a long weekend there with my sister and mum. Yes, ok it's a bit tatty looking but it was still enjoyable to see the illuminations, have a hotdog and some doughnuts :) it brought back fond memories, though I couldn't convince my sister to go on The Big One with me, she was too scared lol.
 
Gosh plenty of memories from camping in the new forest (dry warm summer) to an awful poky caravan in yorkshire that was so cold I had coats piled up on the makeshift bed trying to keep warm and still shivering. B&B's when I was very young (can still remember being unable to sleep due to church bells ringing late into the night in St. Leonards didn't finish till 11.30pm way past my bedtime.) Later holiday lets including a gorgeous place in Cornwall (loved it so much we went back the next year) and was lucky with fantastic weather still have a love of the county.

Lots of rain in Wales trudging up Snowdon and then down again (couldn't move a muscle the next day so bloody knackered and blisters all over my feet) visiting the Lake District and I think it rained every day. Being entertained by cooking sausages on a primus stove by the roadside sheltering from the freezing cold and rain (lake district again) Stayed overnight in a B&B on our one and only visit to scotland and woke up to snow on the ground, on our summer holiday (June).

Got a season ticket to ride on every little railway in Wales (was rather obsessed with steam locos) and must have visited just about every cathedral, museum or other touristy place in the country. Whenever theres some piece about some notable place featured on TV I can most times say "I've been there!" which I'm grateful for so many people seem to have never ventured much beyond their own town or Benidorm.
 
Minxy said:
We used to go on static caravan holidays when we were kids. We visited the same holiday park just outside Dawlish Warren in Devon several years in a row and I absolutely loved it. We would go out for the day to a local town or attraction, come back to the park in time for a dip in the pool before it closed and then back to the van for some dinner before heading down the club in the evening to watch the cheesy entertainment and probably play some games of pool and mess about on the amusements. When the day came to leave I used to cry as I didn’t want to go home. Quite often my brother and I would come home with pen pals. I’m showing my age now!

I’ve been back to the park a couple of times as an adult and back to the English Riviera almost every year since I started driving and the long term plan is to move to that area in the next couple of years. I always feel relaxed there and I put that down to the happy childhood holidays I spent there. It still makes me smile to think back to those days.

We had one foreign holiday as a family. My Mum had breast cancer very young and my Dad was told there was a good chance we would lose her so they took us abroad in case it was the only chance we ever had (we were lucky and she is still with us) however it’s the UK holidays that really stick in my memory.
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that’s a really nice post. Perhaps I should consider some English holidays
 
fastwunz said:
that’s a really nice post. Perhaps I should consider some English holidays
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Yeah it's amazing how much the UK has to offer, it's just a shame the weather can be unreliable. I love the lakes but it's basically a micro-climate up there and it can change quickly. Saying that, I've never had a bad break in the South West regardless of weather.

Don't forget there's always Rhyl if you can't make your mind up! :D
 
You can still recreate the magic especially if you have family - but it doesn't just happen you need to get the ingredients right.

Some of the happier moments of my life were the summer holidays as a kid - jumping in the car with a big bag of chipsticks and a cartoon book and off to wherever - my parents usually travelled fairly far afield - and not really know what the weeks ahead were going to be.

We did a bit of everything though not really ones for caravan/holiday parks. So I got a lot of experiences in.
 
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